Monday, July 9, 2012
Mobile number portability (MNP) is a service that users can change their mobile service provider without changing the number. On January 2011 this service launched in India. Only 45.86 million users used this service. Reason for this can be attributed to India being predominantly a pre-paid market with very limited loyalty to the mobile number. Therefore, people buy a new SIM instead of waiting for the MNP procedure, which takes about seven days.
In 2011 when MNP was introduced, several industry pundits talked about 20 per cent people choosing the service. Another prediction was that operators like Tata Docomo and RCom would gain through this service while Idea Cellular would lose and Airtel would remain unaffected. As a matter of fact, none of the predictions came true. According to data from Trai, Airtel gained marginally, while Tata Docomo, RCom, and MTNL had to take a hit in retaining their subscribers. Surprisingly, Idea Cellular has been the biggest gainer so far.
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