DoT dumps Trai's number portability advice

The government is understood to have rejected telecom regulator Trai's recommendations on mobile number portability (MNP), saying this should not be mandated by the licensor or the regulator, as it would deny subscribers the freedom to change operators without changing the number.

Keeping in view some of the facts and recognising that MNP was not a mandatory service and in the competitive environment, sharing of cost upgrade for such facilities should not be mandated by the licensor (department of telecom) or the regulator and should be left to the commercial judgment of the service providers, sources said.

Trai had given its recommendations in March this year asking DoT to implement the facility by April 2007, saying the government might mandate all cellular mobile service providers to offer MNP, initially to be introduced only within the service area.

Since the regulator had submitted recommendations suo-motu, the DoT is of the view that these are not covered under the particular clause of the Trai Act 1997 and therefore, in case of their non-accepting the recommendations, it is not necessary to refer them back to Trai before taking a final decision.

Trai had estimated that the cost of Rs 940 crore for upgrade of the networks and the implementation mechanism was to be shared by all operators.

It is pertinent to mention that some countries like Japan have already implemented MNP and, according to analysts, subscribers have immensely benefited from the service.

In fact, both operators as well subscribers have gained from it.

Further, DoT noted that MNP cannot be implemented across all mobile segments due to technical reasons.

Some of the stakeholders had favoured MNP while some had said that MNP and Fixed line Number Portability (FNP) should be implemented simultaneously.