If you’re dissatisfied with poor service from your current telecom service provider, you don’t need to bear with it anymore. Just dump it and go for another one. And no, you won’t have to change your number every time you switch providers.
Number portability is here, finally.
After a two year delay, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) will be launched in Rohtak, Haryana today. Telecom Ministry officials say that this system is likely to be launched in other parts of the country by the end of December provided the operators are ready with their network.
Market analysts believe that this would lead to another tariff war as telecom operators would like to retain their existing customers.
Aditya Birla Group’s Idea Cellular Network is confident of attracting users once MNP is rolled out.
“Our focus is to provide good network and customer services. Though we are not launching any new plan or tariff package, we are confident that large number of customers who want to have better network would switch to Idea,” the firm’s chief corporate affairs officer Rajat Mukarji told.
So how does MNP work? Well, all you need to do is send an SMS from your phone to 1900. Your present company will reply with a unique porting code. Use that code while filling out a detailed form for the provider you want to shift to. Within 48 hours, that company will take over all your cell services. This may cost you a meagre Rs 19.
Your cell number will be switched off for only one hour. All bills after that are payable to your new provider. Once a subscriber ports his number to the new operator, then, he will have to wait for at least 90 days before he can change his operator again. While you can shift from a GSM service to CDMA or vice versa, you cannot shift from one state to another.
