Roll out nationwide MNP in six months, Trai tells operators

Full-fledged mobile number portability (MNP) will soon become a reality, with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recommending nationwide implementation within six months. At present, MNP is available only within the service area of a mobile subscriber.

With MNP going pan-India, mobile users will be able to retain their numbers even if they relocate from one telecom circle to another. Plus, mobile users will also not need to pay hefty roaming charges while travelling out of their home city.

“After an examination of various issues, Trai today released the recommendations on full MNP,” the regulator said in a statement on Wednesday. Telecom service providers will be given six months for the implementation of full MNP, it added.

“Implementation of full MNP would, therefore, mean acceptance of a porting request by the recipient operator from a mobile number belonging to any of the service areas (LSA) of the country, irrespective of the fact that the LSA from where the subscriber is porting his mobile number and the LSA to which he wants to port his number belong to the same or different MNP zones,” Trai noted.

The regulator has recommended that the Department of Telecom (DoT) carry out the necessary changes in the existing MNP service licence to facilitate inter-service area porting or full MNP. “The DoT may consider the request of the operators and reduce acceptance testing fee to 25 per cent of the current fee,” said the regulator.

According to Trai, as most service providers are of the view that STD rates have plummeted to almost the same level as local call rates, “the onus should lie on the calling party to bear the STD charges, if applicable”. Earlier, operators had said they would require around $10 million to build the enabling infrastructure for the nationwide roll-out of MNP.

The service would help pan-Indian players gain subscribers at the cost of the operators, whose customers relocate to states they are not present in.

According to industry data, free roaming is likely to benefit over 12 per cent of mobile users. However, operators’ bottom lines would be impacted as they would pay the national long-distance cost. Hemant Joshi, partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells, said:  “India being mostly a prepaid market, full MNP is not going to impact a lot and hence operators are not that worried. There will be no significant impact on the revenues of the operators.”