The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) today said the guidelines for mobile number portability (MNP) were likely to be ready by August-end and asked operators to keep their networks ready to roll out the services quickly.
“We will have an open-house on the porting charges on August 11. Within 2-3 weeks from then we will issue the final guidelines on MNP. The clearing house and operators should be ready with their network so that after announcement of the guidelines the service could be implemented,” Trai member R N Prabhakar said on the sidelines of a conference here.
Telecom Secretary Siddhartha Behura last month said that the service would come by the year-end.
The MNP service allows subscribers switch to another service provider or from one technology to another while retaining their mobile number. The Department of Telecommunications had issued guidelines for MNP implementation in August last year.
Earlier in March, DoT selected two US companies — Syniverse and Telcordia — as technology providers, called as clearing house, for the implementation.
Trai is working on regulations and the charges for the same.
Telcordia will implement the technology in south and east, while Syniverse would handle the services in the north and the western states. T V Ramachandran of COAI, the body of GSM operators, said: “The telecom operators are actively working on that, but they still need some clarification. We don’t want to delay the MNP. We are comfortable with MNP coming in September.