TRAI announced to cut down the time limit for the processing of Mobile Number Portability to 2 Days
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the draft for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) recommendations. This will ensure that each and every mobile operator to complete the MNP procedure as fast as possible & has become much easier.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Porting time within a circle has been halved
- The timeline for MNP requests from one circle to another is still 4 days
- TRAI has mandated two sets of financial disincentives for telecommunication companies
The new Drafted Rules
According to the new draft guidelines on MNP, TRAI has proposed to reduce the time taken by the ‘Donor Operator’ to give a clearance to porting requests within the same circle to two days from four days right now.
TRAI Proposes to Speed Up MNP Process, Cut Processing Time to 2 Dayshttps://t.co/fbjDJfG4qe
— Gadgets 360 (@Gadgets360) September 26, 2018
It has also proposed a financial disincentive “Not more than ₹10,000” for each wrongful rejection of the request for porting. As per the Draft Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2018, made public on Tuesday by TRAI, there are some major changes to the entire MNP process.
The implementation will soon have its effects
As of now, subscribers have to wait for 4 days to get their numbers ported from one service provider to another.
The telecom regulator has called for making the process quicker by cutting down the processing time of porting requests within a circle down to two days. The processing time for porting requests from one circle to another is still four days.
Easier & faster MNP available now
In order to make the MNP process more hassle-free, TRAI has also mandated two financial disincentives for telecommunication companies that fail to follow the new rules.
To ensure that users are able to port their mobile numbers easily, TRAI proposes financial disincentives of up to ₹10,000 for service providers for wrongful rejections of such requests.https://t.co/NeRoJkycS6
— The Hindu (@the_hindu) September 26, 2018
When a subscriber sends an MNP request, the operator will have to forward the request to MNP service provider who will then verify the eligibility of the subscriber for porting and issue the code on a real-time basis.
They will have to send the details of subscribers to MNP service provider within 24 hours of a porting request. Notably, TRAI has proposed to reduce the validity period of the Unique Porting Code generated from four working days to two working days.
The subscriber is needed to share the UPC with the telecom operator to which the number need to be ported, and the recipient operator will have to share the code with MNPSP for further process.
Notably, the penalty has been increased to ₹10,000 for “Each wrongful rejection” of porting requests by an operator.
Additions to the draft to make the customers’ lives easy
The telecom regulator said, “In order to discourage the wrongful rejections of the porting requests and adherence to the timelines specified for the various tasks, the provisions of financial disincentives have been made.”
Trai Makes Major Changes to MNP Procedure, Cuts Down the Porting Time Within Circle to Two Days https://t.co/x56nKchS6I pic.twitter.com/VNmu9M94UV
— Telecom TALK (@TelecomTalk) September 26, 2018
It added, “In the changed process, it is important that wrongful rejections and providing false/wrongful information by donor operator are to be discouraged. Therefore, in order to protect the interest of mobile subscribers, such contraventions of regulations shall be subject to scrutiny and the imposition of the financial disincentives, if applicable.” Until now, MNP requests are processed without evaluating the eligibility conditions.
TRAI in the draft noted that “Porting code mismatch” and “Invalid/ expired codes” resulted in roughly 40 percent of total MNP porting requests.
It said, “Analysis of the reports for the period – April 2016 to March 2017 indicates that average rejection of porting requests by Telecom Service Providers in all the categories was about 11.16 percent and rejections on the grounds of ‘UPC Mismatch’ and ‘UPC expired’ constituted about 40 percent of the total rejections.”