Why all is not well with MNP?

By Krishna Mukherjee

NEW DELHI: With full Mobile Number Portability (MNP) finally seeing the light of the day last week, customers can now bid goodbye to their existing service provider and switch to any other player of their choice across the country.

The government had fixed July 3 as the deadline for a national rollout of MNP and as a result, all the telcos have started providing MNP services.

However, it seems all is not well with MNP, with online helpdesk and product information platform Akosha reporting a rise in MNP related queries and customers showing their dissatisfaction over MNP.

Customers often report that though documents have been submitted to a service provider for number portability but it does not reach the other service provider for action. Besides, even after a new sim card gets issued, there is a prolonged delay in activation.

At times, MNP request gets cancelled by the service provider without any information to the customer. "The existing service provider is not letting the switch to other service provider and in most of the cases, the UPC sent by the existing service provider is wrong. PORT out request by the existing service provider is rejected because of contractual obligations," Akosha said.

The implementation of the technology might be giving a feel good factor for the customer who may think that they are on cloud nine but like any other technology it too brings with itself few loopholes for both the customers as well as the operators.

As customers, one would be happy with the plan they are offered from their current service provider but they might not be happy with the customer service they provide and hence they want to opt for MNP and change a provider.

However, before actually being wooed by a lower tariff plan, they actually need to have a thorough check with existing subscribers of the operator and about the service and network quality that he/she might be going in for.

Also Read: MNP to hurt telcos' revenues; mobile tariffs to move north