India to Finalise MNP Guidelines by End of Month

India's telecoms regulator, TRAI expects that the country's guidelines for mobile number portability will be finalised by the end of this month. The functionality is expected to be launched before the end of this year.

The regulator had issued a consultation paper on MNP in July 2005 and submitted its recommendations to Department of Telecom (DoT) in March 2006.

"We will have an open-house on the porting charges on August 11. Within 2-3 weeks from then we will issue the final guidelines on MNP. The clearing house and operators should be ready with their network so that after announcement of the guidelines the service could be implemented," TRAI Member R N Prabhakar told the Economic Times.

The Department of Telecommunications guidelines envisaged geographical division of the country into two Number Portability Zones (zone 1 & zone 2), each consisting of 11 licensed service areas. Subsequently, one operator in each zone was selected. Syniverse Technologies was granted licence for operating in Zone 1 (Northern and Western India) and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions was granted licence for MNP Service Zone 2 (Eastern and Southern India, based on the selection parameters set in the guidelines for MNP service license.

Mobile number portability is expected to be offered via a phased launch, starting from Metros and A category service areas followed by B and C category service areas.

On the web: Economic Times

Posted to the site on 6th August 2009