TRAI to introduce mobile number portability by June'09

The unsatisfied mobile subscribers will now have to wait one more year as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Friday announced to implement Mobile Number Portability by June 2009.

To pave the way of implementing MNP, TRAI has forwarded its draft Request For Proposal (RFP) to Department of Telecommunication suggesting to select a neutral operator for providing and operating end-to-end MNP solution through a competitive bidding process.

In its submitted RFP, TRAI has recommended to implement the MNP system across the country through phased manner by June 2009. Now, DoT will prepare a roadmap of constituting MNP Clearing House Administrator (MCHA) via selecting a neutral operator and ‘central database’ to solve the end-to-end problem very soon.

As per TRAI proposal, ‘the licence should be given to only the neutral party that should not have more than 10 stake directly or indirectly in any of the service providers and vice versa while the Foreign Direct Investment limit for the MCHA company will not exceed 74 per cent of total investment.

According to TRAI, ‘the subscriber willing to change the mobile operator will not be able to carry the balance transfer on the new account.’ “Subscriber has to either consume the balance amount or forgo it.” said TRAI in a statement.

In the number portability process, first donor operator’s connection would be disconnected then the desired operator’s connection will be made, as cited TRAI. “The whole process will take not more than two hours.” For the entire process, a ‘Centralise Database’ is essential to make, said TRAI.

The company that get the licence of MNP will have to bear all the cost of establishing and running MCHA, which it would recover by charging port transaction fee to the service providers, as TRAI has mentioned in the statement.

Earlier, the DoT had directed the regulator to constitute a steering committee to prepare a roadmap of ‘how to make and implement’ the MNP system. In that response, TRAI had constituted a panel consisting of representatives from DoT, TEC, all service providers and associations under the chairmanship of Secretary TRAI.

Now, TRAI has submitted its draft RFP to DoT covering key issues including constituting MCHA, creation of database and selection process of MNP licensee.

Why MNP system is essential?

Though, all the mobile operators claim to provide best and continuous service without any interruption, but many market surveys have shown that nearby half of the mobile subscribers are not happy and satisfied with their operator and they would like to switch to another service provider but most of them are not ready to change their numbers due to several means.

Thus, the MNP system is required to solve the problem of mobile subscribers. However, this concept is not new and already running in several countries include Pakistan, Australia, Korea, Japan, Canada, the US, UK, most of European countries. As per report, 50 percent of mobile subscribers are using this system effectively.