Mobile number portability history, procedure and new guidelines

Mobile number portability is the facility of changing of your telecom service provider without changing your number .There are two types of Number portability .

1. Recipient Led Porting

 As per  International and European standard is f customer wishing to port his/her number need to contact  new network (recipient), which then sends the number portability request (NPR) to the current network (donor). This is known as "recipient-led" porting.

2. Donor Led Porting

The UK and India are the only exceptions to implement the donor-led porting system. The customer wishing to port his/her number is required to contact the donor to obtain (PAC) in the UK and Unique porting code(UPC) in India)which is then given to the recipient network. The recipient continues the porting process by contacting the donor with a porting code. This form of porting is known as "donor-led" porting system.

new MNP Guidelines

Drawback of Donor Led Porting System

Although this system  prevents MNP scams. It has  been observed that it may act as customer deterrent as well as allowing the donor an opportunity of "winning back" the customer. This might lead to distortion of competition.

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History of Porting in India 

Based on the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on MNP, dated 8 March 2006, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) issued guidelines for Mobile Number Portability implementation in the country on 1st Aug 2008. Subsequently, the DoT selected two companies as MNP Service providers each serving in a designated zone in the country. As per the instructions of DoT dated 6 May 2009, a Port Transaction Charge will be charged by the MNP Service Provider from the recipient carrier for processing each porting request. The Dipping charge shall be payable by those telecom service providers who utilize the query response services from the MNP Service Provider. The Porting Charge is payable by the subscriber to the recipient carrier for porting his mobile number. The port transaction charge, dipping charges and the porting charge shall be governed by the Telecom Tariff Order (TTO)/ determination by TRAI.

Technical details

A significant technical aspect of MNP is related to the routing of calls or messages to a number once it has been ported. There are various types of call routing implemented  across the globe but the International and European best practice is via the use of a central database (CDB) of ported numbers.

 A network operator makes copies of the central database and queries it to find out to which network to send a call. This is also known as All Call Query (ACQ) and is highly efficient and scalable. A majority of the established and upcoming MNP systems across the world are based on this ACQ/CDB method of call routing.

One of the few countries not to use ACQ/CDB is the UK, where once a number has been ported, calls to that number are still routed via the donor network. This is also known as "indirect routing" and is highly inefficient, as it is wasteful of transmission and switching capacity.

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Porting Time

Prior to March 2008 it took a minimum of 5 working days to port a number in the UK compared to 3.5 working days in Pakistan, 2 hours in United States, as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland, 3 minutes in Australia and even a matter of seconds in New Zealand. 

On 17 July 2007, Ofcom(Telecom Regulatory Authority of UK) released its conclusions from the review of the UK MNP and mandated reduction of porting time to 2 working days effective from 1 April 2008.

on 8 July 2010, Ofcom issued a final statement, retaining the donor-led process, mandating a two-hour PAC release time, and reducing the porting time from two to one working day.

In a decentralised model of MNP, a flexible number register may be used to manage a database of ported out/ported in numbers for call routing.

In India time required for Mobile number portability was 7 days earlier  which was further reduced to 2 days for Home LSA(Within State) and 4 days for inter LSA(one state to other state ) in India as per TRAI’s 7^th Amendment to Mobile number portability  Rules,  Dated 13.12.2018, effective from 1 Jan 2019

Porting can be done only after completion of 90 days in one network . Port request can be cancelled within 24 hours of application.

Mobile Number Portability(MNP) Procedure in India

For MNP you need  to write in message box "PORT space MOB NO" and send SMS to 1900 , a unique porting code(UPC) will be send to your mobile by your current operator ,this UPC will be valid for  4 days.

After that you need to visit retailer shop or service center of receiver operator(Telecom operator on which you are porting) and need to give this UPC code along with desired documents and Photograph, to fill the form for porting. New SIM will be provided by retailer or service center. Your request of porting will be send by Receiver operator to Donor operator, once request is accepted by donor operator your old SIM will stop working. Then you need to insert new SIM in your mobile ,now your number is ported in new network.

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Porting Charge to Customer

There is no charge of porting your number but activation recharge is required by new telecom operator to give validity and balance.

After the amendment in MNP policy , recently AIRTEL and IDEA-VODAFONE made compulsory for customers to recharge for min. 35 Rs in a month to continue services. Since this change huge surge is observed in Mobile Number portability from these two operators to RJIO and BSNL.