Mobile telephony entered a new era this month with number portability becoming a reality, fulfilling the desires of many of India’s 970 million mobile users since 2011, when the first step towards “one nation, one number” was launched in a few circles. A cellphone user can now switch his/her service provider if dissatisfied without having to change his/her number.
The extent of dissatisfaction can be gauged from the fact that till April this year there were 157.01 million requests for a change of operator. The only problem now is that many, if not all, operators are plagued with the problem of call drops, that communications minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has recently asked all telecom operators to resolve. Another big advantage is that users can save on roaming charges once they port to the new circle.
The cellular operators are expected to lose a little over one per cent of revenues, but the telecom watchdog says three major operators have already raised data charges from June 1 by 15 to 40 per cent. Mr Prasad has said they should not charge more than 1.3 per cent following the new regime.
The next step before free roaming that can be considered is making incoming roaming charges free. Making outgoing roaming free is more complicated as licensing issues would have to be resolved. One other step is to get fixed number portability (FNP). State-owned MTNL and BSNL have already replaced their old switches with next-generation networks. For now it’s definitely “achche din” for mobile users nationwide.
