MNP: One nation, one number by May 2015

Follow Us

Indian mobile phone users will soon be able to change their telecom operators and retain their numbers even if they are relocating to areas outside the service providers' operations from 2015.

MNP




Government of India has asked telecom firms to implement full mobile number portability (MNP) by May 3 2015.

For this, the Department of Telecom (DoT) has given its approval to the introduction of full mobile number portability and has asked mobile operators to implement it by May 3.

Under the full MNP, for instance, a subscriber in Delhi NCR will be able to switch to a telecom network in Tamil Nadu or in any of the state or place where he is relocating himself/herself while retaining the same number.

At present, number portability allows users to retain phone numbers only within the same circle. For example, if an Airtel user in Delhi relocates to Chennai, he cannot retain the phone number. This will change once the full MNP is introduced.

In the mean time, just about 110.8 million, or 12 per cent, of the 924 million mobile users in India use roaming services and the people who relocate is about a tenth of these. Nationwide mobile number portability will benefit only these 11 million users initially.

MNP, first introduced in 2010 and restricted to within telecom zones, did not attract much attention. Only 13.96 per cent of the total cellular user base, or 129 million people, have ported their numbers so far. India has 22 circles or telecom zones. Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions provide MNP service to all carriers in the present setup.

Recent Comments

Rupesh :

Only 3500? These 5 states combined have 51744 towers. Means less than 5% per state. BSNL will never get level…

BSNL Installs 3,500 4G Towers Across 5 North Indian States:…

Faraz :

"BSNL plans to quickly upgrade 4G services to 5G by June 2024 " Is this a typo or a quote…

BSNL Installs 3,500 4G Towers Across 5 North Indian States:…

Faraz :

Population growth and growth of mobile users are more than that. And I was wondering Vi started gaining 4G customers…

Vodafone Idea Only Added 4 Million 4G Users in Four…

Girish Gowda :

Oh hell no. Airtel 4G is literally unusable aside from a few posh locations in the city. My mother has…

Spectrum Auction 2024: DoT Excludes 700 MHz Frequency Band, Get…

TheAndroidFreak :

They haven't deployed band 1 10Mhz at most of the places. Don't expect much of the speeds you mentioned. 3G…

Spectrum Auction 2024: DoT Excludes 700 MHz Frequency Band, Get…

Load More
Subscribe
Notify of
25 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments