Trai Seeks to Change Norms of Mobile Number Portability to Bring Down Waiting Time to 2 Days

Back in April, the industry watchdog, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had issued a consultation paper to review the norms about mobile number portability. This consultation sought inputs from the concerned authorities about fastening of the MNP process which currently takes up to 7 days in the country. While in the other parts of the world, the process is almost instantaneous. If passed, then these new norms will ensure that subscribers experience, smooth and swift mobile number porting.

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Trai on the Verge of Publishing Draft Rules on MNP

As per a Livemint report, an anonymous Trai official said “The draft rules are ready, and we will publish them soon to invite public comment. Basically, the new norms aim to reduce the time (to port) and the discretion of the donor operator.”

It is also worth noting that currently, the norm dictates that a subscriber should stay with the current carrier for at least 90 days before porting his number. Further, the waiting time for MNP in India is seven days except for Jammu and Kashmir, where it remains 15 days for security reasons. The Trai official further said about this new development, “We want to bring this (porting period) down to two days.”

MNP Complains Increase as Telcos Stop Operations

The telecom regulator was also quick to point out that following the exit of loss-making telcos like Reliance Communications and Aircel and their stoppage of operations had further agitated a lot of their subscribers and this was apparent from the complains received by the authority. The regulator also added that most of these complaints were related to mobile number portability.