mobile number portability

In the last one year, India telecom industry has remained abuzz with murmurs of mobile number portability (MNP). This is not a new phenomenon in western countries. However, as Indian telecom industry has kept on reinventing itself in last few years, MNP is the next obvious evolution being offered to phone subscribers. The draft of regulations for mobile number portability was announced by The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).

What MNP refers to is that any subscriber can retain his existing telephone number even while he decides to switch from one access service provider to another access service provider irrespective of mobile technology or from one technology to another technology on the same or any other access service provider. Now, isn’t that a great news for regular mobile subscribers?  Now, you have discovered cheap rates offered by service providers. With possibility of MNP, you can now subscribe to services of and at the same time retain the old number of 9810555555.

Mobile number portability will be implemented first in Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra & Gujarat Service Areas of Zone-1 and Kolkata, Tamil Nadu (including Chennai, AP and Karnataka). It was supposed to come into existence by Sept 20th 2009 but then got delayed to 31st December 2009 and further delay is expected. Going by the current infrastructural issues, now the possible implementation of MNP is likely to go to 31st March 2009.

MNP is definitely a wonderful feature for common subscribers. However, it also entails some cost. Telecom regulator TRAI in its recent announcement has asked mobile service providers not to charge more than Rs 19 from customers for switching to another operator. Operators are free to charge anything less than that. The government has asked operators to ready their networks and infrastructure by December 31 of this year. The initial operations will be performed in metros and later on it will be available to all the telecom regions

MNP option is available to pre-paid mobile phone subscribers as well. The users will have to request new operator to port their existing numbers. The modus operandi of the MNP specifies that ported subscriber will need to surrender his number first which will then go back to his existing operator. The subscriber will only be eligible to make a request for changing his mobile number after the expiry of a period of ninety days from the date of activation of his present mobile connection.  Get further information from Department of Telecommunications, India -  http://www.dot.gov.in/