CDMA operators agree on number portability

Even as the government has not acted on the telecom regulator’s recommendation on framing a policy on number portability in mobile phone services for more than a year, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) players have now stressed the need for the same.

Number portability enables you to switch from one service provider to another without changing your number.

In a letter to communications minister A Raja, CDMA players, represented by the Association of Unified Service Providers of India (AUSPI), said that the Department of Telecom (DoT) must issue necessary guidelines for implementing mobile number portability.

CDMA players have been favouring number portability in both fixed and mobile networks. Now, they seem to have climbed down a bit, saying only the latter needs to be done for the time being.

AUSPI secretary general SC Khanna said in his letter to Raja: “In case fixed-number portability cannot be introduced at this point of time for any reason, technical or otherwise, mobile number portability should not be held up.”

Global system for mobile communications (GSM) service providers, represented by Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), is opposed to the idea of number portability in mobile telephony, at this point.

According to COAI, it can be introduced only after the telecom market matures further.

While CDMA operators include Reliance Communications and Tata Teleservices, GSM operators comprise Bharti, Vodafone Essar, Idea, Aircel, and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd.

“Number portability is a very important and effective tool for ensuring competition in the telecom market,” AUSPI’s Khanna has written to the minister.

“Any technical or operational apprehensions should not hold up the implementation of number portability because we have before us the experience of other countries and suitable remedies can always be found,” he said.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India had, in March 2006, recommended that mobile number portability should be in place by April 2007.

That was one of the last recommendations/orders by former Trai chairman Pradip Baijal. The government has already missed the Trai deadline by around four months.

The move would have stepped up competition in the telecom industry, thereby improving the quality of service as all service providers would have made an effort to prevent customers from shifting to competition.

The Trai recommendation, issued in March 2006, was only for introducing number portability in mobile telephony and not fixed phones. The regulator wanted the rollout to begin on April 1, 2007, across metros, before moving into A, B and C category cities within six months.

So far, most mobile operators have been against the introduction of number portability, as they didn’t want to let go of the customer base they built. Industry estimates suggest that anything between Rs 1,500 crore and Rs 3,000 crore is required as one-time cost for upgrading the networks to enable number portability.