MNP: 40 lakh switch in 40 days
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March 9: Within 40 days of the mobile number portability (MNP) regime around 40 lakh dissatisfied customers have applied to change their operators. MNP, which allows the consumers to change their operators while retaining their mobile number was launched nationally on January 20, 2011.
The maximum demand has come from Gujarat where 3.65 lakh subscribers have applied to change their operators by the end of February. In Andhra Pradesh over 2.3 lakh subscribers had requested for change of their service provider at the end of February while in Karnataka there were 3.18 lakh requests and in Tamil Nadu service area around 2.76 lakh.
Out of these requests around 3.20 lakh pertain to Haryana where MNP was implemented from November 25, 2010 on a pilot basis. The number of subscribers requesting for changing their number could have been much larger but in some parts of the country the system is still not working properly.
“In view of the large number of rejections and complaints, Trai is in the process of verifying the correctness of the port rejections done by the service providers on a sample basis,” said Trai in a statement. Religare Capital in a report said that incumbents have been the clear beneficiaries, largely at the expe-nse of CDMA operators and BSNL. Among the bigger gainers are Vodafone, Idea and Bharti, it said.
“Further, our on-the-ground checks in circles such as Mumbai indicate limited traction and one-time upfront costs of `200 per port-in. We continue to maintain that MNP is unlikely to be a game changer for the sector and incumbents are likely to gain at the margin,” Religare Capital said.
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