Another Delay to India's Mobile Number Portability Launch

­India's already delayed launch of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is likely to be pushed back by yet another three months. The launch which has been planned for April is now unlikely to be available before July, at the earliest.

The decision to delay the launch was decided at an internal meeting of the Department of Telecom (DoT) today, highly placed sources told The Economic Times newspaper.

The service was due to launch on Jan 1st for the main Metro markets, however, the Department of Telecom had agreed to delay the launch after the network operators said that they were not ready with their network, with a nationwide rollout at the end of March.

Given the number of operators and as many as 12 billion calls per day, the system has to be in place and this may take some more time, they said. Asked whether by July the service will come into effect, sources said this will be the minimum period required for implementing the service.

The DoT guidelines created geographical division of the country into two Number Portability Zones, each consisting of 11 licensed service areas. Subsequently, one operator in each zone was selected. Syniverse Technologies was granted licence for operating in Northern and Western India and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions was granted licence for Eastern and Southern India.

According to a Nielsen survey last year, it seems that close to one in five (18%) Indian mobile phone subscribers could change their mobile operator when Mobile Number Portability is introduced into the market.

On the web: The Economic Times

Article published on 14th March 2010