DoT postpones mobile number portability to April 2010

The government has postponed the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) by at least four months, detracting from its earlier promise that the rolling out will take place on New Year's Day.

The service was expected to be available in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu - including Karnataka and Chennai service areas - by end-2009 (See: Implementation of mobile number portability pushed to 2009-end)

Number portability will allow a person to retain the mobile number even after switching to another telecom service provider in the same service area, irrespective of the technology (GSM or CDMA) used.

In November, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) had fixed the per port (operator to operator) transaction charge to be paid by the mobile phone subscriber at Rs19 and has set 31 December 2009 as the implementation date for mobile number portability (See: TRAI sets mobile portability charge at Rs19).

A statement issued by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) yesterday said mobile number portability would be implemented only by April 2010.

As opposed to the earlier plan of rolling out MNP in metros and some big cities by January 2010 and other parts of the country by April 2010, the government is now planning to introduce the plan for the entire country at one go.