August 01, 2007	Wednesday	Rajab 16, 1428

KARACHI, July 31: Less than one per cent of over 61 million mobile phone users avail the facility of mobile number portability (MNP) launched on March 23, 2007, sources in mobile phone industry said.

They said that only 24,000 cell phone users had so far changed their services. In the first week of June, their number was 17,000. In the first one-and-a-half month of MNP operations, only 10,000 people changed the service from one mobile operator to another.

Chief Executive Officer of Pakistan MNP Data Base Guarantee Limited (PMD) Zahid Minhas when contacted said he was busy in a meeting. “You better ask the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) about the data as they deal with the press,” he added.

PTA, watchdog of the telecom sector, had issued the figures only once since the MNP launch. The authority has not come out with total figures of the last four months about the gainers or losers under the MNP facility.

PTA’s officials had been saying that they were dependent on the figures of mobile number portability facility (port-in and port-out) on the receipt of data from the PMD.

The PTA was supposed to issue data every month after the launch.

All the cell phone operators had been reluctant to give data as they said that either the PTA or the PMD were responsible for releasing the data.

Cell phone operators had invested Rs5 to 6 billion to launch the MNP. The PTA estimates that the consumers benefiting from the facility would be between 1.5 to 2 per cent of the total cellular phone users as worldwide ratio of consumers changing operator is three per cent.

It has been noticed that the cell phone operators have not shown any zeal in promoting and creating awareness about the MNP in the print and electronic media as compared to expensive media campaign launched for the promotion of various post-paid and pre-paid packages and other schemes for new connections.

A large segment of the society is still unaware of the MNP because of slow and low level publicity campaigns of the operators. The PTA also claimed to create public awareness, but it failed.

A number of people have two to three SIMs in their hands of various operators, besides owning same number of cell phones.

Some companies are charging Rs500 for MNP activation while new players in the market are offering it free of cost.

When customers have an access to getting a pre-paid SIM connection for Rs100-150 only in a few seconds, why they would go for the MNP service, which takes four days for a pre-paid connection and six to eight days for a post-paid connection.

A customer is required to present an application, a written request on company’s letterhead (for corporate customers), CNIC copy and the actual SIM. It takes approximately four working days to port a number, provided there are no obligations/liabilities on the existing cellular network.

The MNP offers mobile customers the ability to move from their current network operator to another operator still keeping their mobile number, including the code intact.