India's government is understood to have finished the plans to introduce limited mobile number portability in selected regions of the country from next year. The Economic Times newspaper says that the formal plans will be announced within the next few days by telecom's minister, A Raja. Under the plans, customers in the main metro circles and A circles will be the first to have mobile number portability (MNP) from the middle of next year and it is estimated that around a quarter of subscribers are unhappy with their current provider. However, a report early last year by Analysys noted that while MNP has been in place for several years in many countries, despite the high level of churn in the mobile industry there are few examples where more than 10% of mobile numbers have been ported.
A tender to run the centralised number portability database is expected to be issued shortly. Number portability, however, needn't be bad news for everyone in the industry. It is a great opportunity for a service provider to differentiate from the rest of the pack by offering a truly superior service that is customized to individual users -- something that few service providers seem to be doing today. And as Bharti's Chairman Sunil Mittal reportedly said, it opens the prospect of attracting high-end users from competitors.