Three years after it was proposed, the nationwide Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is all set to become a reality in India as major operators have announced their readiness for the same. Bharti Airtel, the leading telecom operator of India, first announced its readiness for full MNP followed by the second largest operator of the country – Vodafone. Meanwhile MTS and Reliance Communication too have expressed their readiness for full MNP.
While announcing the company’s decision in favour of nationwide MNP, Bharti Airtel said, “With this, mobile customers spread across the country can now easily shift between states without having to change their mobile number. Customers on Airtel, the largest telecommunications network in India can enjoy special offers like requests for Porting within Airtel’s network being processed within 24 hours and free incoming on Roaming once they raise a number portability request until it is processed,” said Airtel in a press release.
However, this facility of Airtel will not be applicable for customers moving to J&K, Assam and North East owing to security reasons.
Airtel also said that its customers can also avail the option of transferring their balance in prepaid or carrying forward their unbilled/billed amount in the case of postpaid while porting their number to the new city.
Meanwhile, Vodafone followed suit soon announcing, “Customers will be the biggest gainers of the National MNP service as it allows them to carry their existing number across India and also choose the operator of their choice. Vodafone has benefited from the intra-circle MNP that was rolled out in 2011 and we look forward to a similar response this time.”
Both RCom and MTS will roll out Mobile Number Portability nationally from July 3. “Reliance Communications will also be offering attractive and aggressive plans for both its pre-paid and post-paid customers, as well as customers porting in from other networks, to ensure that this is a seamless and easy transition,” a Reliance Communications spokesperson further added.
Full MNP allow a mobile user to change his/her operator irrespective of state while keeping the number. For instance, currently a user in Delhi can retain his number while switching to another service provide in the Delhi circle only and he/she has to opt for a new number altogether if migrated to other telecom circle, say Mumbai. But with full MNP he can retain the number that he had got in Delhi even if he switches over to a Mumbai operator.