Mobile number portability A market for new handsets with dual operation will open up and start flourishing
The options open to the subscribers are service portability, location portability and number portability The reason favouring number portability is that the mobile subscribers base is increasing at a very fast rate CONSIDERING THE base of 81 million mobile subscribers and 49.21 million fixed wire line subscribers in the Indian telecom network as on 31st January 2006, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has come out with strong recommendations for introducing Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in the country and issued notices to all mobile service providers to initiate action to incorporate MNP before 1st April 2007. A boon to customers MNP is a boon to the customer as he is allowed to keep the same mobile number even when he switches over to other operator - may be for reasons of a lower tariff or more advanced service. In the number portability issue the options open to the subscribers are: Service portability - ability of the subscriber to retain the existing telephone number when changing from one service to another service, say, from fixed to mobile service. Location portability - is the ability of the subscriber to retain the existing telephone number when changing from one physical location to another. This LP can be at the maximum within the charging area. Number portability - the customer is allowed to keep the same number of his mobile phone while switching over from one mobile operator to another mobile operator within his service area. This is in fact a regulatory attempt seeking to liberalise telephony service competition by enabling the end-user to change his operator at his choice with aim of getting better service quality and comparably lower tariff. The mobile teledensity is only 8 per cent as of now and MNP is required only when it reaches 25 per cent. In the mobile category the mobility aspect is provided on two different technology platforms namely, GSM &CDMA. Number portability in a multi technology platform will cost more for service providers and to customers as well. While the mobile operators are in full swing, expanding their network and investing huge sums in upgradation and value addition projects like GPRS, EDGE, the important question is whether they should divert the investment for MNP without having definite assurance on revenue increase. The theories advanced in favour of mobile number portability, may sound attractive, namely: `When unsatisfied cell phone customers want to change their service but not their phone number' they should be given the option; `MNP will give incentive to operators to improve their quality of service'; `MNP will provide the customers true benefit of competition rewarding (them) with operators with best customer service, coverage and service quality'; MNP removes the barrier to switching networks thereby increasing subscribers' choice. Need for a study Before initiating action to implement MNP it is essential to have a study conducted to rate the present status of different operators with respect to service quality, network coverage and tariff pattern, so that `porting-in' to ` porting-out' ratio of each service provider can be assessed. Porting-in must be more than the porting-out customers for good service providers. The ratio may vary between 4:1 (the best) to 1:4 (the worst). The reasons favouring MNP are on the ground that mobile subscribers base is increasing at a very fast rate and the overall mobile teledensity may likely touch 20 per cent by April 2007 (even now the teledensity of mobile phones in metro cities is above 40) Dual technologies are in the field in the mobile network such as Tata and Reliance use CDMA for mobile while all other operators use GSM. The mobile handset of the customer requires to be changed when he switches over from GSM to CDMA by incurring expenditure. A market for new handsets with dual operation (CDMA and GSM) will open up and start flourishing with this MNP. The delay in introducing MNP now, when the total subscriber base is less than 100 million, will definitely cost enormously when the base exceeds 250-300 million in a year or two. Other expenditures This is because in the case of MNP, major infrastructure investment will be on database creation and maintenance. Other costs are mainly on administrative centre, redundancy hardware and software and signalling network setup. Besides this, technological aspects of off-switch solutions such as `all-call query' or `query-on-release' and on-switch solutions like `interdependent routing' or `onward routing' will add up to the project, cost wise. The implementation of MNP has been proposed to be in a phased manner, starting with the metros, A grade circles followed by B and C service areas. A. GANESAN Deputy General Manager, Southern Telecom Region,Chennai Read and Confirm this Story Vikas Kapoor, MSN ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Skype ID: dl_vikas Mobile: (+91) 9891098137. To unsubscribe send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
