Panama to Study Number Portability in 2007
Panama's public services regulator ASEP will study next year the requirements needed by operators to implement number portability for local fixed and mobile services, daily La Prensa reported.
ASEP will analyze who would be responsible for financing the switch: the government; the operators themselves; or a combination of the two.
Implementation of the feature comes at a high investment cost for operators. In the Dominican Republic fixed line incumbent Verizon Dominicana has announced it would invest US$20mn in upgrades to facilitate the measure.
Number portability is a much talked about subject throughout Latin America with Colombia, Peru, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Brazil all debating options for its implementation, though to date only Puerto Rico has managed to fully implement portability.
However, according to Signals Consulting president José Otero, Puerto Rico is a very atypical market since there are six mobile operators, one Iden operator and four MVNOs, which by Latin American standards is extraordinarily competitive. However, the broad range of different operators has not had a large impact on churn rates, Otero said.
"The international experience has shown that the largest impact on number portability is a higher quality of service rather than an increase in telephony penetration indexes, since operators are more interested in increasing quality, generating new price offerings and packaged services in order to avoid clients from taking their numbers to rival operators," Otero told BNamericas.
In countries such as Peru, operators have argued against portability because of low penetration. Peru has a mobile penetration rate of 27.5% according to statistics from the country's regulator Osiptel.
Panama though has a higher mobile penetration rate of 50.1%, giving the initiative more precedence.
The feature is toted by supporters as a means to increase competition, allowing smaller telephony operators to compete for clients who previously would not have considered switching operator because they did not want to lose their number.
In mature markets, such as Japan, which implemented number portability on October 24, the launch was marked by price cuts, system crashes and a probe by the country's fair trade commission, Dow Jones newswire reported at the time.
BNAmericas.com"
Posted to the site on 30th November 2006
