By Prince Osuagwu

WHEN the number portability project of the Nigerian Communications Commission becomes reality, your MTN number can become a Glo, Etisalat or even Airtel number, or the other way round. Even as you may wish to do this at will, the interesting thing is that it would also be without having to change your SIM card.

That is what Number Portability, NP, is all about – allowing subscribers move from one network to the other, retaining their numbers, without necessarily changing their SIM.

Where ever it has been introduced, it helps reduce the complaints of poor quality of service by the networks, as subscribers would have the opportunity to change operators at will. That is eventually why Nigerian subscribers yearn earnestly for it.

 Poor service quality

But despite giant strides recorded in the sector in the last 10 years, poor quality of the operators’ services has brought a lot of pain to many subscribers. Many subscribers had only remained with their service providers because of the fear of losing their identified numbers.

Although the operators have always tried to tackle this challenge by either deploying new facilities or upgrading existing ones, the growing number of subscribers on daily basis, coupled with other factors like destruction and vandalisation of telecoms equipment always slow the wheel of progress down.

Experts after a careful x-ray of the challenge, fingered Number Portability as panacea. Yet a lot of factors seemed to have held its implementation down.

This is even when the commission, NCC, itself admitted that when implemented, number portability would push all the mobile phone operators to reduce their tariffs and improve the quality of their services since monopoly over subscribers would be removed.

However, in a recent chat with the NCC Executive Vice Chairman, EVC, Dr Eugene Juwah, he hinted on his commission’s desire to flag the programme off immediately, revealing why it has not been possible ever since.

Why number portability was delayed

According to Juwah, “we deliberately delayed number portability, because we don’t want to inject number potability in a state of anonymity of SIM cards. In a state of confusion and chaos of registration data.

So we said that as soon as we get a good grapple on SIM card registration we are going to revive the process by actually announcing or declaring a clearing house for the number potability process. We have, however, met and are at the verge of appointing a provider for number potability database.

He however added that “appointment of an operator for number potability doesn’t mean that number potability will take off immediately.

He has to set up his equipment, interconnect with all the operators and by international standards, it takes nine months from the time of appointment of number potability consultant to realising the goal itself”.

NCC promised that by July the NP clearing house would have been appointed and the process of setting shop here sets off.

Incidentally, reliable sources at NCC informed Hi-Tech that just like the EVC promised, everything about having a contractor to man the execution of the project has been concluded, waiting for announcement at a very short time from now.

Fears of sabotage

Even if Number Portability were to kick off now, subscribers still fear that just like many Nigerian projects, it may be sabotaged. Those who spoke to Hi-Tech, raised issues with the contractual relationship between the operators in the porting system where a users’s service provider would have to give permission before the line is ported into another operator’s network.

But NCC also cleared the air on that ambiguity, saying “there is usually a donor and a recipient and if there are issues where the donor cannot allow a recipient to receive a subscriber coming from the donor, NCC as the arbiter would seek for reasons and promptly resolve it.

It is called a recipient claim and that is the way it is done in every country. The recipient must ask the donor to allow porting and the donor cannot arbitrarily say no. In any case, we are not inventing the wheel, nor do a Nigerian number portability. We are going to be doing it according to international standards”.

 The India experience

Meanwhile, Hi-Tech checks reveal that India which only launched the services in January has started reaping the benefits already.

According to data from the telecommunications regulator, about 13 million subscribers changed their service providers before the end of June, when India hit 851.7 million mobile-phone users.

The data also revealed that Idea Cellular Ltd., the fourth largest Indian mobile company has gained the highest number of customers while Reliance Communications Ltd, India’s second largest operator based on subscribers, lost more subscribers than any other company.

While Idea Cellular gained 824,845 users by end of June via number portability, Reliance Communications lost 1.2 million subscribers. In that manner, third-ranked Vodafone-Essar Ltd., the Indian unit of Vodafone Group Plc, got 711,135 customers via the facility, while market leader Bharti Airtel Ltd. gained 650,599 users. State-run Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. lost 40,366 and 573,142 subscribers, respectively.

The users who opted out of the state-run companies were said to have mainly cited network and tariff issues for their decision.

Consequently, India’s telecom regulator announced last Wednesday that it has issued notices to some leading operators for violating mobile number portability regulations by overcharging and preventing the customers from changing their service provider.

If the Indian example could be evaluated and described as successful, Nigeria may perhaps not look far for adaptive models that can aid the country in getting number portability right.