Mobile Number Portability in India – Details/Perspective
DoT has issued mobile number portability details and the first phase will be rolled out in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai by September 20th, 2009.
Mobile Number Portability Details :
- Delhi, Mumbai, Maharashtra and Gujarat Service comprise Zone I – MNP to be implemented by Sep 20, 2009.
- Kolkata, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Andhra and Karnataka comprise Zone 2 and details will be finalized by Sep, 2009.
- Rest of the country by March 20, 2010.
- Syniverse Technologies (Zone 1) and MNP Interconnection (Zone 2) are the two companies who have been licensed by the DoT to carry out the MNP exercise (source).
As far as cost of the service is concerned, the charges are likely to be less than Rs. 300/ and operators will take maximum 2 days to change the provider.
MNP – To Switch or Not? Some Perspective
Except Finland and HK, most countries have witnessed less than 5% of switch in first 12 months of introduction of MNP.
What about the Indian market?
More than 90% of Indian mobile users are on prepaid connections and do not have number loyalty (~churn rate of 4% on monthly basis) – the switching cost of Rs. 300 is pretty much the same as a monthly rental (or maybe, more than that). Unless operators start offering compelling services, do you sense major uptake in the first few years?
What about the operators?
Do you think MNP implementation will increase the churn rate of operators? What’s the ideal strategy to manage MNP?
My sense says operators will add a lot more nuances (for instance, time bound etc) to ensure that switching cost/experience is fairly high (as ARPU is still sliding).
What’s your take?
More details at DoT site.
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Related posts:
- Mobile Number Portability in India – Post-paid users most likely to switch
- Mobile Number Portability Delayed [Again]
- Mobile Number Portability is in – switch operator, not your mobile number
- Telecom News: 16.67 Million Wireless Connections Added in October, Mobile Number Portability by December 31st
- Mobile Number Portability sees some light: Two MNP Service Providers announced
About the author - Ashish Sinha is a Startup Mentor/Product Strategy Coach, and the founder/chief editor of pluGGd.in.
He has launched/managed couple of products (consumer as well as enterprise) in US and India, and now consults with startups/small businesses on their product/media strategy. He can be reached at: ashish (at) pluGGd.in [+91 98452 06443]
Isn’t Bangalore been treated badly everywhere? It’s like living in Metro without any Metro advantages.
I believe that MNP will be a cause of concern for operators in India since the entry and exit barriers are low. Comparing India with other markets will not be ideal as in most of the countries, a mobile service is contract-bound and thus creates an exit barrier for the subscriber (due to huge fees to be paid to violate the contract). I just hope operators cater to this threat by increasing their value proposition rather than price wars as prices in India are already one of the lowest in the region and a price war will eventually kill the competition which will not be good for consumers.
[...] http://www.pluggd.in/mobile-number-portability-india-details-297/ [...]
Game Changer: Mobile Number Portability
http://punchlineexpert.blogspot.com/2009/06/game-changer-mobile-number-portability.html
actually its good since all blood s***ers wil come to an end. prices will be down and down. All low pay income consumers will have more happiness. It will also built cheaper call rates among all sorts of good services. and mobile internet card rates will be in normal plans . and its high responsibilty of the government not to delay more than april 2010 since it will be more useful for rural village people to know about some new technology and it will lead a good competition among mobile operators. hats off MNP.