Trai mandates pan-India number portability within six months

[mmadhankumar]

Indian mobile phone users will be able to keep the same number when they're moving to a different state by April as telecom regulator on Wednesday mandated mobile phone companies to implement full mobile number portability within six months.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (Trai's) move will come to aid of millions of mobile phone users that have to purchase new numbers while moving to another state.

Mobile number portability (MNP) allows a subscriber to retain his mobile telephone number when he moves from one service provider to another.

At present, MNP is restricted within a service area. For example, a Bharti Airtel subscriber from Andhra Pradesh circle can port his mobile number to Idea Cellular within Andhra Pradesh only.

If this subscriber moves to another circle, for instance, Delhi, he needs to acquire a separate Delhi mobile number, else pay roaming charges, which are higher than the average call tariff. India has 22 service areas or circles.

Pan-India MNP will allow this subscriber to move to any other circle like Delhi or Maharashtra, even a new service provider like Idea Cellular, without changing his mobile number and hence not pay roaming charges.

Full MNP will present an opportunity for leading mobile phone companies like Idea Cellular, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone that have benefitted from circle level MNP in the past. The government allowed MNP within the same circle in January 2011. Till June this year, more than 93.5 million customers had requested to move to a new service provider, Trai data revealed. The service is provided to all carriers by Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions.

Mahesh Uppal, director at Com First (India) Ltd, a consultancy dealing in telecom regulatory affairs, added that smaller players are likely to take up this chance to acquire corporate customers that bring in more revenue.

Trai has finalised a method for processing cross-circle porting requests after holding consultations with the industry. Accordingly, a carrier that receives a porting request from a circle, for instance, Delhi, forwards it to the MNP provider that oversees this circle. Future porting requests of this number that may be within a circle or to another circle will be handled by the same MNP provider.

Under this approach, no interconnection between the MNP providers is required, leading to minimal costs for installing this system. The regulator has asked the telecom department to make changes in the existing MNP licences and its own instructions of May 2009, issued to implement MNP in India.

The service is provided to all carriers by Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions.

Mahesh Uppal, director at Com First (India), a consultancy dealing in telecom regulatory affairs added that smaller players are likely to take up this chance to acquire corporate customers that bring in more revenue.


Trai mandates pan-India number portability within six months - The Economic Times

 

[Omi]

good update.... we have been waiting for the implementation of Pan-India number Portability from a very long time.... Hopefully this time TRAI implement it..

 

[me_saket]

I am also waiting.

So no roaming free all be implemented.

4

 

[NinadG]

So intercircle MNP customer need not have to pay for roaming charges if pan India MNP is implemented. But what will be charges for calling such MNP no? Will it be local or STD calling rates?

 

[me_saket]

It ll be std call

4