With its own public sector undertakings (PSUs) expressing inability to meet the deadline to implement the mobile number portability, the government has called a meeting of the stakeholders on Thursday to review their readiness for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) implementation.
Telecom secretary P J Thomas will review the progress made by the operators, including the PSUs, BSNL and MTNL, as well the two MNP service providers--Synverse and MNP Interconnection Telecom (MITS).
Both the state-run telcos had informed the government that they would not be able to implement the system before April for a variety of reasons such as lack of time to tweak the technology, tariff plans and billing among others.
The government had set December 31 as the deadline for implementing MNP regime for the metros and June 2010 for the non-metros.
The prime minister too had said that MNP was expected to be introduced early next year which would force operators to improve the quality of their services.
The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had reviewed the progress of the operators last month and with the deadline approaching it has upped its ante to make the operators meet the deadline.
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Sectoral regulator TRAI chairman J S Sarma said operators should try to implement the facility.
DoT has set up a coordination committee with BSNL and MTNL and two MNP service providers-- so that the proposal will not be derailed.