The Hindu : Business : Number portability issue hots up

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 14, 2007
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Business

Business

Number portability issue hots up

Sandeep Joshi

GSM, CDMA operators at loggerheads

Undue advantage to CDMA operators, says COAI
GSM operators worried over RCom move

NEW DELHI: The Union Government’s announcement to introduce the number portability facility for the benefit of subscribers has further intensified the tussle between GSM and CDMA mobile operators. While their fight over spectrum allocation continues, the number portability issue will only complicate things.

While the CDMA operators, led by Reliance Communications, have welcomed the move, the GSM operators’ organisation — Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) — has alleged that it would give undue advantage to CDMA service providers.

“Mobile number portability is being introduced to benefit a select operator desirous of entering the GSM segment and thereafter poaching on the subscribers of existing GSM players,” COAI Director General T. V. Ramachandran said in a statement.

Though he failed to mention the ‘select operator,’ leading GSM operators are worried by the plans of the largest CDMA operator — Reliance Communications — to launch pan-India GSM service soon.

Reliance Communications has accused COAI of indulging in ‘shadow-boxing’ on behalf of two operators (read Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, the two major GSM service providers). Stating that the new move will only benefit subscribers, Reliance Communications has stated that COAI’s opposition to number portability was beyond comprehension and it was other GSM operators like Aircel, Idea and Spice that would benefit most from it.

“COAI fears on poaching of customers illustrate monopolistic, anti-competition and anti-consumer mindset. Customers are nobody’s monopoly and they should have freedom of choice. It is time for COAI to drop charade of being an industry association,” Reliance Communications has stated.

COAI has expressed its unhappiness for not introducing number portability in a “holistic manner,” covering all operators, both fixed and mobile.

“Internationally, number portability is used to promote competition and that in India, the need for increased competition is more evident in the fixed line segment where 90 per cent of the subscribers are with one operator (read BSNL),” Mr. Ramachandran said, questioning why the benefit of number portability was being denied to the fixed line customers?

Pointing out that the Government was safeguarding the interests of BSNL, COAI went a step further and asked for freedom to subscribers to switch over from fixed line to mobile without changing their phone numbers.

“A fixed line customer should have the freedom to port his number to another fixed operator or even another mobile operator, if desired,” Mr. Ramachandran said.

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