In its aim to shape the future Indian telecom sector, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released recommendation on One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and suggested implementing the same within six months.
Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has brought a major boost to Indian telecom sector, with consumers having real power to choose the telecom operator they want. Ever since MNP has launched in India the porting request are on rise. According to TRAI‘s telecom subscription data as on 31st May 2013 a total of 93.56 million subscribers opted for MNP at the end of May 2013. As per the TRI recommendation, mobile subscribers can switch to any telecom operators in any part of the country keeping the same mobile number, even if that telecom operator doesn’t operate with in that telecom circle.
Currently mobile subscribers can choose MNP to port to another telecom operator within the same telecom circle he/she resides. So it caused trouble for some mobile subscribers, when they change location like move from one telecom circle to another telecom circle (one state to another), they need to take a new mobile connection with new mobile number otherwise they need to pay for heavy roaming charge on using their existing mobile connection.
On 27th December 2012 DOT sought recommendation from TRAI in accordance with the provisions contained in the National Telecom Policy- 2012 regarding “One Nation – Full Mobile Number Portability”. In this regards TRAI sought inputs from stakeholders and operators on various issues such as suitable method of implementing inter-service area porting, processing porting request, generation of UPC etc.
Some insight on the TRAI recommendation include –
- After the Full Mobile Number Portability (inter-service area portability) is implemented the Recipient Operator will forward the porting request to the (MNP service providers) MNPSP of the zone to which original number range holder ( the telecom operator to which the umber originally belonged before its first porting) belongs.
- Telecom service provider will be given 6 months time for implementation of Full Mobile Number Portability.
- Some modification have been suggested to the MNP service license, to facilitate inter-service area porting
- Testing Fee for testing the various scenarios n Full MNP may be reduced to 25% of the current prescribed Fee for TSPs and MNPSPs.
- Subscribers need to be educated to dial numbers in the +91 format which is the standard dialing format, after Full MNP is implemented.
Source – TRAI