The Hindu : Business : Portability of mobile number in a year

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 09, 2006

Business

Business

Portability of mobile number in a year

Staff Reporter

TRAI recommends one-time payment of Rs. 200

NEW DELHI: In a move that would allow mobile subscribers to change their service provider without changing their mobile number, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday forwarded its recommendations to the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on mobile number portability (MNP), seeking changes in the present licence regime so that it could issue guidelines for the same.

Fixing a timeframe of 12 months (April 1, 2007) for the launch of the facility, TRAI, in a statement here, said portability would benefit subscribers besides encouraging improvement in the quality of service through increased level of competition between service providers. A subscriber would be able to avail himself of the service by making a one-time payment of Rs. 200 that would enable the operator to recover in three to five years his investment cost involved in introducing portability.

Stating that the number portability facility be initially introduced within the service area only, TRAI said MNP would be implemented in a phased manner starting from metros and A category service areas followed by B and C category service areas within an interval of six months.

TRAI believes that it is an appropriate time to initiate the process for implementing MNP to increase subscriber convenience. The telecom regulator has also recommended implementation of an "all call query method'' for the new facility. Through a neutral third party, mobile operators would establish a logically centralised database with not more than five regionally located databases. The cost of this database would be borne proportionately based on the subscriber strength of each operator, it added.

Stating that any other issues relating to creation of database, interfaces, performance parameters and service levels would be resolved by discussion and coordination among all the stakeholders, TRAI has also recommended formation of a steering committee comprising operators and industry associations to work out the details of the implementation issues.

However, for fixed lines, the regulator has come to the conclusion that this is not the appropriate time for introducing the SDCA based Fixed Number Portability.

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