DoT rejects number portability move

The department of telecommunications (DoT) has rejected the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (Trai) recommendation that mobile number portability be implemented in a phased manner from April 1, 2007. The DoT has said that portability is not a mandatory service and the timing of its implementation should be left to the commercial judgment of operators.

Number portability ensures that mobile phone numbers do not change even if users switch operators.

Reasoning in an internal note, the DoT has said that the cost of network upgrade for number portability works out to Rs 940 crore and in today’s competitive environment, it may not be appropriate for either the regulator or the licensor to ask operators to share the cost amongst themselves. Rather, such a step should be left to the commercial judgment of operators.

The DoT has also said that number portability cannot be implemented across technologies like GSM and CDMA in the absence of dual handsets.

Trai had submitted the recommendations suo-motu and they were not covered under the relevant clause of the Trai Act 1997. Therefore, in the event of the recommendations being not accepted, it will not be necessary for the DoT to refer them back to Trai before taking a final decision.

Number portability is already on in the US, the UK, Australia, Germany, France, the Netherlands and Singapore.

In India, however, most telecom operators had opposed the move, stating that fixed number portability should be implemented first. In fact, the Cellular Operators’ Association of India had even got a survey conducted by a market research firm, which concluded that mobile number portability was not a must for cellphone users.

But consumer organisations had favoured the move.