The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday forwarded a request for proposal to the department of telecommunications (DoT) for selecting an operator to provide and operate mobile number portability (MNP) in the country. The company chosen must not have substantial equity in any of the telecom service providers.
Trai has said that the company so selected would act as Mobile Number Portability Clearing House Administrator (MCHA) must not have substantial equity in any of the telecom service providers. This entity would be licensed by the DoT and the FDI limit applicable to it would be 74% as is applicable for the telecom companies.
Regarding the operational part of MNP, Trai has said that the pre-paid mobile operators will not be able to port their balance credit and will either have to exhaust or forgo it before opting for a new service provider.
The porting process would entail a ‘break before make’ period during which connection from donor network would first be disconnected and then the connection with the recipient network would be made.
Regarding the cost of setting up and running the MCHA, Trai has said it would be borne by the MNP licensee who shall recover it in the form of port transaction fee from service providers.
Earlier, DoT had asked Trai to constitute a steering committee to deliberate the issues relating to the implementation of MNP in the country. Trai had constituted the committee consisting of representatives from DoT, Telecom Engineering Centre, all service providers and associations under the Trai, for deliberating on the issues relating to methodology for the selection of the neutral third party or parties to act as MCHA (including MNP database), creation of data base, interfaces, performance parameters, rights and obligations of subscribers, donor and recipient operators, timelines for implementation etc.