Number Portability To Be a Reality Soon – TRAI To Submit Recommendations

OK now, how many of you, curse your mobile operators seven times a day but can’t really do anything, ‘coz some thirty-seven million “contacts” have your number? Alright, I can see almost all hands up. A number once given out is difficult to change. We have a lot of personal and business contacts getting in touch with us through that one 10-digit code.

I have seen people literally throwing away their handsets in frustration. Then picking it up, picking up the battery, re-assembling it, and continue the use. Customer Care is more of a “Value Added Service” that college student sometimes use to entertain themselves, than a real help centre.

Number Portability allows one to retain one’s number while switching the operators. So, if your Reliance Mobile customer care is a waste, the billing is erroneous (to put it politely) and there are just no Nokia N-Series handsets available, you can happily switch over to a Vodafone network, while still retaining your three year old number, just in case your ex decides to call you sometime.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has said it will be submitting its recommendations for Number Portability by early April-2008. Once the recommendations are in place, this will get the process moving and the Department of Telecommunication can take further action on the issue.

Indian telecom market is expanding at a hefty pace. The United States, a mature market, started Number portability only in 2003. And India, as always, has had the benefit of late market entry. Observing the success of the number portability in the U.S., Indian government decided to implement the number portability here in India.

A lot of people have been crying foul about the delay in TRAI’s recommendation. Reliance has been waiting to get a GSM license, and it was alleged, primarily by the GSM operators, that the number portability was being worked upon, primarily to help Reliance. Once the scheme is in place, it was alleged, Reliance can offer lucrative schemes to allure customers from the Reliance CDMA service to its new, GSM service.

Industry-wallahs have also been shouting ‘coz the scheme does not benefits the older players and helps any new entrant. With the launch of Virgin mobile in India, some of the customers would want to try out the new service. Number portability makes that easier.

Seems like having the lowest telecom tariffs in the world was not the best that could have happened to the Indian mobile phone user. There is a still lot to come.