Trai to allow pan-India mobile number portability from May 3

Mobile phone users will be able to port their numbers anywhere in the country while changing service providers from May 3 with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) notifying the amended regulation to implement the move on Wednesday.

Mobile number portability (MNP) currently allows consumers to change their service provider while retaining the same number only within a telecom circle, which in most cases is limited to a particular state.

Once the pan-India MNP kicks in, a subscriber who shifts from Delhi to Bangalore, for instance, will be able to retain the same number while selecting a different service provider.

In a statement, Trai said that it has issued sixth amendment to the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulation, 2009, which will facilitate full MNP with effect from May 3. The department of telecommunications had on November 3, 2014, issued amendments to MNP licence agreement stating that the facility should to be implemented across the country within a period of six months from the date of amendment of the licences. Accordingly, Trai has made the sixth amendment to MNP regulation effective from May 3, 2015, Trai said.

Apart from facilitating the pan-India portability, the amendment has made some changes in the porting process as well. In case a postpaid subscriber defaults in paying his/her previous bill which was due to the donor operator (previous service provider) from who the subscriber has ported out, the donor operator has to give a notice within 30 days of the due date of payment of its outstanding bill. After a lapse of 60 days from the due date of payment of the outstanding bill, the donor operator will not be entitled to raise non-payment disconnection requests with the recipient operator, or new telco, to which the subscriber has ported.

For a subscriber who has defaulted payment to the donor operator, the donor operator will request the recipient operator to disconnect the ported number.

The recipient operator in turn will give a 15-day notice period for making such payment failing which the outgoing services of the defaulting subscriber will be debarred for 15 days. In case, the subscriber fails to make payment within 15 days, the number will be disconnected permanently by the recipient operator.

In order to effectively utilise the numbering resources, the amendment makes a provision to reduce the time period for a portable mobile number which has been disconnected due to any reasons to return to the original service provider to whom the number belongs in 60 days instead of 90 days proposed earlier.

3 TELCOS MULL LOWERING TARIFFS

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>> Videocon Telecom director and CEO Arvind Bali said that the company intends to pass on the benefit to customer by means of reduced tariffs for local and STD calls