No more lengthy waiting for a week, no more pesky calls from telcos ‘Retention Experts’ and no more wrongful rejection. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has revamped its eight-year-old mobile number portability or MNP guidelines, curbing down the issues and long wait time.
To make the porting process faster and convenient, the telecom watchdog has revised the process for validation of conditions and generation and delivery of UPC or Unique Porting Code. There would be a query response mechanism that would enable the Mobile Number Portability Service Provider (MNPSP) to query the database of the Donor Operator on real-time. Then based on the response of the queries and fulfilment of other prescribed conditions, the allocation and delivery of UPC shall be ensured by MNPSP.
To cut down the long waiting period in processing the MNP request by telcos, TRAI has reduced the timeline for port out requests from 7-days to two days, that’s within the same telecom circle. Similarly, request for port out from one telecom circle to another has been fixed to four days. Thus, every telecom operator in the country needs to complete the entire MNP porting process within a maximum period of four days.
In the case of corporate porting, one could port out 100 numbers with a single authorization letter, which is double the present limit of 50 numbers. Also, MNP requests made under corporate category has been set to four days.
TRAI has also reduced the validity of the UPC from 15 days to 4 days. It’s applicable to all circles except for Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East for which the validity of UPC remains unchanged.
MNP Timeline Changes
- A customer can port out from one network to another in two working days, if in same telecom circle and four days if in different telecom circles.
- Timelines of 4 working days have been provisioned for all the porting requests of the corporate category.
- Corporate customers can now port out 100 number with a single authorization letter.
- UPC validity reduced to four days from 15 days in all telecom circles except for Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East.
In addition to this, TRAI will impose a fine of Rs 10,000 on telcos for each “wrongful rejection” of a request for porting. Thus, it would limit the telecom operator from wrongful rejections and providing false or wrongful information to MNP requesting customer.
TRAI has also put forward the Quality of Service parameters for all MNPSPs and access providers. It would monitor the entire MNP process accordingly and financial disincentives shall be imposed for the violation or deviation on part of the MNPSPs and Access Providers.