Pan-India mobile number portability from 3 May: Trai

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on Wednesday announced the planned roll-out of pan-India mobile number portability (MNP) from 3 May, which will allow mobile users to use the same number across the country.

Trai today announced the issue of ''the sixth amendment to the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulation, 2009, which will facilitate full MNP (pan India portability) in the country from May 3.''

Trai said the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had, on 3 November 2014, issued a letter stating that amendments to MNP service licence has been carried out and that full MNP would be implemented in the country within six months from the said amendment.

Accordingly, the government has now decided to implement inter-service area mobile number portability from 3 May, Trai said in release.

As per the Trai release, a mobile phone subscriber may make a request for porting of his number to the recipient operator (RO) who will forward the porting requests to the MNP service provider (MNPSP) to which the number range holder (service provider who originally allocated the mobile number) belongs.

Even if a subscriber ports his mobile number from one MNP zone to another, the same MNPSP will continue to handle his porting requests for all subsequent portings. This is required as the porting history of the subscriber is maintained by the MNPSP of the MNP zone to which his number range holder belongs, Trai said.

This facility of full MNP was to be launched by April 2014 but the DoT got embroiled in technicalities related to its implementation.

The pan-India portability incorporates a few changes in porting process, such as in case a post-paid subscriber defaults in the payment, which was due to the previous operator (known a donor operator or DO), it may ask the recipient operator (RO) for disconnection of the ported mobile number.

''It is noticed that in many cases, the DO raises disconnection requests (due to non-payment of outstanding bill) long after the subscriber has ported his number. Therefore, there is a need to bring order in this matter so that non-payment disconnection cases are settled in a timely manner by the donor as well as the RO to avoid any inconvenience to the subscriber at a later date,'' Trai said.

Accordingly, in the amendment, time period of `30 days' from the due date of the outstanding bill has been specified for a DO to raise the non-payment notice to the subscriber who has defaulted in the payment.

It is also stipulated that after completion of `60 days' from the due date of payment of the outstanding bill, the DO will not be entitled to raise non-payment disconnection requests to the RO through the MNP service provider.