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Mobile number portability will engender competition among operators – NCC

By on June 2, 2013

The Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, said it introduced the Mobile Number Portability, simply referred to as “porting”, into the telecoms industry in order to create healthy competition among the operators.

Executive Vice Chairman of the NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, disclosed this at the 73rd edition of the Telecoms Consumer Parliament held at the Bridge Waters Hotels, Enugu.

Juwah said consumers of telecoms services were desirous of getting value for their money, adding that it was the duty of the commission to protect consumers from abuses by the service providers.

He continued that the NCC had in line
with this, introduced porting as one of such measured which would to a large extent enhance quality network and force operators to lower their tariff.
According to him,

“Mobile Number Portability will provide consumers with the option of choosing their network at any time while retaining their number.
“It will give rise to healthy competition in the industry, enhance quality of service and improve customer service delivery to the consumers.

“It will provide consumers with unfettered choice and remove the trouble of having to move around with multiple cell phones”.

“Mobile Number Portability will eliminate the associated cost of updating business contacts, marketing, notifying family members and associates”, he added.
The NCC boss expressed optimism that porting would considerably bring down tariff charges in view of the competition it would engender among operators, stressing that “it will further expand the market place and make the deployment of new and enhanced telecom services faster and more cost effective”.

On the procedure for porting, he explained that “porting subscribers must register their SIM cards before they can port. Without the registration, the network operators would not be able to identify a porting subscriber or confirm that such is the rightful owner of the number being ported”.

Juwa equally disclosed that a subscriber must be physically present before the operator would allow the porting process, which would take a maximum of 48 hours.

Most of the parliamentarians who spoke at the forum, urged the NCC to address the issue of inter-connectivity rate, to make porting meaningful.

The Mobile Number Portability, which took off on the 22nd day of April, 2013, allows a telecoms subscriber to migrate from one network to another within a period of 90 days without losing the original mobile number