Indian telecom operators are concentrating on delivering data-centric offers, and customers are going after the operator who is offering best data plans at cheap rates. One has to admit that Reliance Jio has the best tariff plans right now, but state-run telecom operator BSNL is not far behind. As a result, telecom regulator TRAI is receiving whopping MNP requests every month.
According to the data released by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 19, 2017, the regulator has received a total of 6.04 million MNP (Mobile Number Portability) requests only in the month of March 2017. This number is up from 5.67 million requests received in February 2017.
Until March 31, 2017, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 266.73 million at the end of February 2017 to 272.76 million, since the implementation of MNP. TRAI has divided the MNP service into two zones in India- Zone-I and Zone-II. In Zone-I, regions under Northern and Western India will be covered, and this zone received the highest number of MNP requests compared to Zone-II.
The cumulative MNP requests for Zone-I stand at 136,797,087, while the Zone-II is marginally less at 135,965,800 MNP requests. In MNP Zone-I, the highest number of requests till date have been received in Rajasthan of about 23.00 million, followed by Gujarat receiving about 19.54 million.
In MNP Zone-II, the maximum number of requests till date have been received in Karnataka about 29.91 million, which is followed by Andhra Pradesh receiving 24.64 million requests.
In Zone-I, the lowest number of requests is received by Jammu & Kashmir at 1,24,495, followed by Himachal Pradesh with just 9,86,477 requests receiving till date.
As usual, TRAI did not release the data regarding which operator received the maximum number of MNP requests. By far, it would be Reliance Jio and BSNL due to the luring data offers.
Speaking about the MNP service, it was initially started back in 2010 in Haryana and quickly spread across every state of India at the beginning of 2011. Back then, the service was available as Intra-service portability. In 2015, TRAI started the service on an Interstate portability, which means that subscribers can keep their existing number when relocating from one area to another.
