Philippines Cancels Plans for Mobile Number Portability

The Philippines telecoms regulator, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) has shelved plans for mobile number portability in the market, citing high costs. Edgardo Cabarrios, NTC chief for common carriers authorization said that the number portability is too costly on the part of the subscribers based on the recommendation of the agency’s technical working group.

”It’s technically feasible, but not financially viable,” he said.

Whether the technical group had taken submissions from number portability clearing houses was not clarified - but the massive volumes of text messages which would need routing via a central hub is likely to have proven insurmountable unless the network operators were also allowed to raise tariffs at the same time.

 Some six hundred million SMSs are sent every single day in the country.

Figures from the Mobile World subscriber tracking database for the end of Q1 '06 notes that of the four main operators, Globe is the leader with some 21.3 million customers followed by Smart (20.3 million), Piltel (10.9 million) and Sun Cellular with 5.3 million customers.

Posted to the site on 2nd September 2008

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Stats Update

Hi, please use more recent stats.

I understand that well over a billion SMS are now sent every day in the Philippines. I\'m sure a quick search online will give you some more accurate figures.

Smart is the leader in the market with around 34 million subs, second is Globe with around 22 million.

#1 - StJohn Deakins - 09/04/2008 - 04:29

On Number Portability

From my knowledge, in most of the countries where NP has been implemented - there are no added cost to the consumers. Mojority of SMSs are routed by the network operators and they can choose to have a mirror copy of the Master Database in their network.

In the spirit of competition, with Number Portability, since subscribers are free to "carry" their number regardless of network operator - it "forces" network operators to ensure a high level of service quality so that they don't lose customers. At the same time, network operators will have to work harder (in terms of luanching new and innovative services) and spending more marketing dollars to bring in new customers from the competition or to retain existing customers. This implies that Number Portability is beneficial to mobile subscribers - whether you port or not.

#2 - Bill Ku - 09/04/2008 - 06:28

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