Mobile number portability licences by 5 March: Raja

Successful bidders for grant of mobile number portability (MNP) service licences will be announced on 5 March. They will also be issued letters of intent (LoI) by that date, minister for communications and information technology A Raja told the Rajya Sabha today.

As per the guidelines, MNP is to be implemented in all 'metro' and Category  'A' service areas within six months of the award of the licence and in the rest of the service areas within one year of the award of the licence.

He said there will be no delay in implementation of number portability and the government has issued guidelines for award of MNP service licences in August 2008.

''The tender for grant of MNP service licences was floated on 25 November 2008 following due procedure.  As per the present schedule of events of the tender, the date for announcement of successful bidders and issuance of letters of intent is 5 March 2009,'' he said.

Meanwhile, the department of telecommunications has made it mandatory for all access service providers, including licensees for cellular mobile service, unified access service and basic service, for making provision of equipment identity register (EIR) in their networks by 31 March, so that calls from mobile handsets without IMEI or electronic serial number (ESN) as the case may be, or calls from mobile handsets with IMEI/ESN of all zeros, are not processed and rejected.

Further, although import of cellular mobile handsets is allowed under Open General Licence, with a view to safeguard security, the government has notified to the customs to allow import of mobile handsets after declaration of IMEI numbers only, Raj said.

''It has come to the notice of the government that Chinese mobile handsets without international mobile equipment identity numbers are available in the market. As per security agencies, sometimes they use IMEI in tracking anti-social elements, and to that extent it becomes difficult for security agencies to trace persons using handsets without IMEI numbers,'' the minister pointed out.

In order to restrict the use of Wi-Fi internet connectivity by unauthorised persons, the government has issued instructions on to all telecom service providers to secure use of Wi-Fi internet services, including centralised authentication mechanism for Wi-Fi internet connectivity, minister of state for communications and information technology Jyotiraditya Scindia informed the House.