The revamped mobile number portability (MNP) or port out rules aim to makes the entire process faster and simpler, cutting the migration process to two days.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is working hard on the technology front to offer a seamless experience for telecom and DTH subscribers in India. Recently, TRAI has announced a new date for the implementation of the revised mobile number portability (MNP) rules.
These rules were declared in the last year of December, nearby other modifications within the Mobile Number Portability (Seventh Alteration) Directions, 2018 (9 of 2018). Whereas the corrections to ease portability from one telecom operator to another have been concluded, it has taken TRAI over a year to induce it implemented. The authority has directed to telecom operators for thorough testing and fix of any issue which may arise before the new MNP rules come into effect.
No MNP Service Period for 6 days
There will be ‘No service period‘ of 6 days for mobile number portability starting from 00:00:00 hours of December 10, 2019 till 23:59:59 hours of December 15, 2019 for all Telecom Circle. Existing active UPCs where no porting request is not submitted by the subscriber till 23:59:59 hours of December 09, 2019, will become invalid. The subscriber can attempt the UPC generation afresh after the migration to the new process starts from 00:00:00 hours of December 16, 2019.
The reason for this hold is that the MNP service providers and the systems at work which facilitate porting in the backend are being updated and tuned to the new rules. When the porting resumes back on December 16, then the subscribers will be able to enjoy the new porting regulations which significantly cut down the waiting time period on both inter circle and intra circle porting. However, for faster porting, the customers will have to hold on to their old operator until December 16.
What Will Happen For Existing Porting Requests
For all such previous requests where the subscriber submits porting requests by 23:59:59 hours of December 09, 2019 and the Donor Operator subsequently grants clearance, the porting will have to be executed in the next porting window.
New MNP Rule Defined by TRAI
Individual porting requests of Intra-Circle (within the same state) will be completed in 3 working days; whereas the porting requests of Inter-Telecom Circle (Outside of the current Telecom Circle) nature and all porting requests under corporate category (both same and other states) will be completed in 5 working days. For example – Porting request of the mobile subscriber ‘X’ (individual) of Karnataka Telecom circle who wants to change his operator within Karnataka telecom circle will be completed in 3 working days, whereas the service request of a person ‘Y’ (individual) who wishes to port his mobile number from Karnataka telecom circle to Delhi telecom circle service area will be completed in 5 days).
The validity of UPC as per the new process will be 4 days for all Telecom Circles, excluding the Telecom circles of Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, and North East, where the validity of UPC will still be 30 days.
Currently, all telecom operators are offering much-excited offers to ring-fencing their subscriber lifecycle but are completely a choice of a subscriber in terms of various offers, quality of service, network coverage and stability. The current MNP process is quite a time taking which is an approximately eight-day activity that can be quite unfavorable for subscribers.
To recall, till now, TRAI has postponed the transition to the new MNP regime a couple of times already. This is because TRAI had noted that a thorough testing process was going on in the backend to make sure that the MNP service providers and the systems of the telecom operators were in the proper place before the new MNP regime was brought into effect.
