After three years, Mobile Number Portability gains traction

Mobile users are increasingly using the mobile number portability (MNP) to change their telecom service providers. Between December to February on an average around 25 lakh people put up MNP requests every month to change their mobile operators. MNP allows a subscriber to change his or her mobile operator while retaining the mobile number. Till February 2014, some 114 million people had requested for MNP in the country. In February alone 2.47 million users submitted requests for MNP.

“Telecom subscribers have become more aware about MNP. Any mobile subscriber who is not happy with the level of service provided by their operator is using MNP to change to other service providers. Infact, I personally used it to change my service provider and now I am very satisfied," said S.C. Khanna, telecom consultant and former secretary general of AUSPI. He said that these days telecom operators fully co operate with each other in porting the subscribers and are not putting down porting requests.

“Around 2.5 million MNP requests in a month is quite significant. It reflects some level of dissatisfaction with the quality of services provided by the telecom operators,” said Mahesh Uppal, director of consultancy firm ComFirst India. However, he didn’t foresee any further increase in coming months “as most of the telecom operators offer comparable level of quality of service.”

However, GSM operators association COAI director general Rajan Mathews dismissed the number as insignificant.

“The global benchmark is that around 3 to 4 per cent subscriber use MNP. In India it is less than 1 per cent,” said Mr Mathews. It was on 20 January 2011 that mobile number portability was launched nationwide by the Prime minister Manmohan Singh. Dr Singh had launched the service in the country by making inaugural call to telecom minister Kapil Sibal from a ported number.Now in the next stage in MNP, government is looking to allow subscribers to retain their mobile number even if they shift cities and states. In September Trai in its recommendation sent to the telecom ministry had said that the telecom operators have been given six month to implement full mobile number portability.