The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) recently released the Monthly Telecom Subscription Data for the month of February 2018. In the report, Trai stated that it received a total of 6.57 million MNP (Mobile Number Portability) requests. At the end of February 2018, the cumulative MNP requests increased from 344.59 million at the end of January 2018 to 351.16 million, since the implementation of MNP. In MNP Zone-I (Northern and Western India), the highest number of requests till date have been received in Rajasthan (about 29.16 million) followed by Maharashtra (about 25.02 million) service area. Coming to the MNP Zone-II (Southern and Eastern India), the highest number of requests till date have been received in Karnataka (about 35.65 million) followed by Andhra Pradesh (about 30.57 million).
This number is for the month of February 2018 as mentioned and it's expected that Trai will receive a massive number of MNP requests during the month of March 2018. We're expecting at least 10 million MNP requests in March because Aircel has applied for bankruptcy, leaving more than 84 million customers in a spot of worry.
Since Aircel's filing for bankruptcy, top telecom operators have been posting about the number of customers they added from the Aircel network via MNP. Airtel has added more than 4 million Aircel customers, and the same number applies to other telcos such as Vodafone, Idea Cellular and BSNL.
To give a brief history of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service, it was implemented as Intra-service area MNP in Haryana back in November 2010 but quickly got extended to other circles from January 2011. Later on, the Trai introduced Inter-Service Area MNP in July 2015, allowing users to retain their mobile number when they relocate from one service area to another.
The report also revealed that Reliance Jio added 8.7 million new customers during the month, followed by Idea Cellular and Bharti Airtel with 4.4 million and 4.1 million new subscriber additions. Trai will release the subscription data numbers for the month of March 2018 during the third week of May. COAI is yet to release March 2018 subscription numbers of private telcos such as Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Aircel and RCom.
