New Delhi: The telecom regulator on Thursday said mobile number portability (MNP) will be implemented nationwide from Oct 31, ruling out any further delay.
The MNP is a service that allows a mobile user to change his operator while retaining the number.
"There will be no further delay in the implementation of MNP," Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) Chairman J.S. Sarma said here.
The Department of Telecom (DoT) Wednesday said the operators must ensure that all inter-operator tests for porting the numbers from one service provider to another are completed before Sept 1, 2010.
The Dot made it clear to all telecom operators that in case they fail to implement MNP as per the scheduled deadline, they will be barred from launching any new commercial services from Sept 1.
"It has been decided that permission to launch commercial service in any area with effect from September 1, 2010 shall be given to only those licensee(s) who are MNP compliant," said a DoT note.
Mobile service providers - Bharti Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone Essar, Tata Tele, Idea, STel and Aircel - are getting ready to launch high-speed 3G services from next month.
State-owned telcos Bharat Sanchar Nagar Nigam and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited have said they are ready with the infrastructure to implement the MNP service.
The earlier June 30 deadline for the implementation of MNP was deferred as the operators were not ready with the infrastructure to provide the service.
The MNP was to be implemented by December 31, 2009 in all the metro cities as well as in the states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
The deadline was then changed to March 31, 2010 and thereafter to June 30, 2010.
Asked about the rolling out of 3G services, Sarma said: "I see no reason to believe that there would be any delay."
New Delhi: After missing three deadlines, mobile number portability (MNP), which allows subscribers to retain numbers even after changing service operators, will be rolled out in November, Telecom Minister A Raja said.
"November 1 onwards, MNP would be operational partially... First, we wanted to inaugurate in Haryana," Raja told reporters on the sidelines of an event organised by BSNL in New Delhi on Tuesday.
He also said that in the first phase, MNP will be launched in 11 circles and the implementation will begin from the second or third week of November.
An official announcement about this will be made on November 1. Implementation in the eleven circles would be completed by December 20, he said.
Syniverse Technologies, which had been selected by the telecom department as one of the clearing houses for implementing MNP, will manage the first phase of the roll-out.
The Department of Telecom had given licences to Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions, a 74:26 joint venture between US-based Telcordia and Deepak Talwar Consultants Pvt Ltd, to implement MNP.
However, MNP Interconnection is yet to get security clearance from the government.
MNP will allow users to retain their mobile telephone numbers even if they switch operators.
The service is expected to be rolled out in the rest of the country in phases.
The deadline for roll-out of number portability in the country has already seen three extensions, which has resulted in a delay of almost one year. The last deadline for implementing MNP was October 31, 2010.
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