Mobile Number Portability and its after effects

Ankita Agarwal (Systems & Finance I year)

MNP has been implemented now its time for a reality check for all CSPs. Good boys will be rewarded and bad boys will be punished. And, for a change, the verdict would come from none other than the king (the subscriber!) himself.

Mobile Number Portability means the facility which allows a subscriber to retain his mobile telephone number when he moves from one Service Provider to another irrespective of the mobile technology or from one cellular mobile technology to another of the same service Provider. Hence one can port a CDMA number to GSM and vice-versa. The worlds first country to adopt MNP was Singapore in 1997, followed by UK , Hongkong and Netherlands in 1999. The MNP service was launched across India by Jan 20, 2011 as per the timeline decided by DoT. In India, it is currently available for intra-circle only. However due to the configuration of each Telecom circle porting can also happen between Madhya Pradesh & Chhattisgarh; Bihar & Jharkhand; Rest of West Bengal & Andaman and Nicobar; within the states of the North East excluding Assam. The major changes that MNP brought in the telecom domain for the CSPs as well as the subscribers are discussed in the following paragraphs. Firstly, MNP has created a levelplaying field for the CSPs and a competitive environment. With the introduction of MNP, customers are empowered to change their operator at the smallest problem they encounter with the services provided. This has led to an increase in the Quality of Service offered by the CSPs. Apart from the QoS, the CSPs have also started to concentrate on improving other services like Customer care, Tariff plans and so on. MNP has had a few significant implications, both for the subscribers and the Cellular Service Providers (CSPs), but still it has not acted as a game-changer. It has been noticed that the first consumers to switch their mobile operators were the unsatisfied post-paid customers. Postpaid customers are only 4% against a 96% of the pre-paid segment- where number retention is not a priority. Pre-Paid customers usually buy a new connection from a different CSP, if they are not satisfied with their current provider, instead of going through the rigorous procedure of MNP. Even if the Pre-paid customers port-out from an operator they have very low ARPUs and the cost of servicing each customer is quite high, in terms of the revenue losses. Hence, operators expect MNP impact not be quite huge. Also, post-paid customers are those who do not want to change their phone numbers very frequently due to minor reasons. Therefore, if given a chance to walk out on an operator, while still keeping the previous mobile number, post-paid customers would be more than happy to port-in to a better service provider and hence contributing to a major part of the churn caused by MNP. In India, pre-paid customers outnumber the post-paid customers. Also, a major chunk of the pre-paid customers have multiple SIM cards of different operators. Brand loyalty, thus, is not the reason why customers stay with a particular operator. It is the optimum Quality of Service that a customer desires from a CSP.

Industry sources say, on an average around 200,000 porting requests were received from across the country. "As of now porting request numbers are insignificant in the overall scheme of things," said an industry source. India has around 860 million wireless subscribers, according to the latest numbers by Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI).This data signifies that MNP has not been able to cause a major churn for the operators. The rules of MNP say a network cannot refuse a customer coming into the network, and hence cannot control the quality of subscribers that could enter their networks. Experts say the direction of migration could be towards incumbents. Operational costs will go up as a large number of subscribers add into the network. Analysts say this would put pressure on the network causing congestion, and reducing service quality to the high ARPU customers, who are present in larger numbers in incumbent operators' networks. An IBN survey finding provides that Airtel was the most preferred operator with 26% respondents voting in its favor, followed closely by Vodafone (21%) and Idea (13%). Idea came at a distant 3rd position despite having launched a big advertising campaign No Idea? Get Idea An important aspect that has been ignored in enforcement of MNP is that consumers are no more able to distinguish between different networks when placing a call. Due to this, the tariff transparency has been lost. That is , if there are different rates applicable for calling to a different network , a subscriber might end up being unaware of the charges that he is paying for a particular call. One more fact which deters users to go for MNP is the inconvenience caused during the whole process , when the subscriber has to apply for porting out of an operator and moving on to a new one. Also, quite a few documents need to be submitted along with a few more formalities and a fee of Rs. 19. A normal pre-paid customer would find it easier to buy a new SIM instead of porting his existing number to a different operator. Even after being aware of the fact that MNP is not going to cause a major churn for the telcos, Mobile phone companies are under constant pressure to improve their services so that their subscribers not only stay with them but they are also able to attract subscribers from other networks. Better services mean the companies are setting up more mobile phone towers, upgrading their equipment and providing instant rectification of problems so that the subscribers are always able to get connected, surf the Internet and make full use of their mobile telephones. References:

articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com ... Mobile Number Portability http://www.mnp-india.com/component/content/article/44-pre-paid-churn-may-spoil-mnpprofits http://www.mnp-india.com/mnp-india/number-truly-portable-