It has become almost a routine affair for the department of telecommunications to announce the postponement of the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP). It?s a serious issue for anxious consumers waiting to change their network operators without having to change their mobile numbers, but the government seems unmoved.
It has been almost two years since the communications & IT minister A Raja announced that MNP would be implemented soon. MNP was supposed to be a tool to empower mobile users who could penalise their telephone service provider for poor services by switching over to another telephone service provider while retaining their phone numbers.
Last December, Trai recommended the porting charges and cleared the path to implementing this service. However, the government has, ever since, cited security issues and lack of preparedness on the part of telecom operators for not meeting the implementation deadline.
While security issues may have some limited relevance, what beats logic is to postpone the entire thing on the pretext of unpreparedness on the part of one or two operators, which happen to be state-owned BSNL and MTNL. If, for instance, the state-run BSNL and MTNL aren?t ready with their equipment then why not let the other operators go ahead with the service? What the government can do is to allow all the other operators to participate in MNP, while levying a penalty on the the telecom operators who aren?t ready to participate in this facility.
The solution is indeed very simple, but the problem was never the result of a lack of solutions but rather the lack of an incentive for the government to implement the simple solution. Unlike the multi-billion dollar procurement tenders or spectrum auction where the government earns windfall gains, MNP does look a bit drab since the government doesn?t earn anything. But the department of telecommunications needs to understand this because its lackadaisical attitude is a very poor reflection of governance.
?anandita.mankotia@expressindia.com