Telecom Regulatory Authority of India

13.12.2018

Media and Communication

TRAI releases Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2018

MANU/TRAI/0131/2018

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has today issued Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2018.

2. TRAI had issued the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (MNP) Regulations 2009 (8 of 2009) dated 23rd September 2009 laying down the basic business process framework for implementation of MNP in the country. In a continuous endeavour to make MNP process more subscriber friendly, based on feedback from the stakeholders and its own analysis, TRAI has issued various Directions and amendments to the MNP regulations.

3. Keeping in view to devise mechanism for reducing the rejections on the grounds of "Unique Porting Code (UPC) Mismatch" and "Unique Porting Code (UPC) expired", the Authority initiated draft Telecommunications Mobile Number Portability (seventh amendment), Regulations 2017, on 16th August, 2017 for seeking comments of the stakeholders. The comments received from the stakeholders were examined and analysed. Through the comments, it was observed that in addition to the amendments as proposed in the draft MNP regulations (seventh amendment) as mentioned above, various other issues were also raised by stakeholders and new mechanisms were suggested.

4. Pursuant to the suggestions/ comments submitted by the stakeholders during consultation on draft 7th amendment, the Authority on 6th April, 2018, initiated the Consultation Paper (CP) on 'Review of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) process' for the comments of the stakeholders. The Consultation Paper envisaged to review all the existing issues with a vision to make the MNP process more efficient and convenient for the telecom subscribers. Total thirteen (13) comments and five (05) counter-comments were received from the stakeholders. An Open House Discussion was convened on 11th June, 2018.

5. Based on the comments /counter-comments received during consultation process, the Draft Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations 2009 (Seventh Amendment) was issued for the comments of stakeholders on 25th September, 2018. The draft amendment was made available for consultation on TRAI's website. Written comments on the draft amendment were invited from the stakeholders by 24th October, 2018. Total nine (09) comments were received from the stakeholders.

6. Through this regulation (amendment), a major shift in the mechanism for generating Unique Porting Code (UPC) has been provisioned. To make the porting process faster and convenient, for all the cases except corporate porting cases; in the revised process for validation of conditions and generation & delivery of UPC; it has been provisioned to establish a query response mechanism to enable the Mobile Number Portability Service Provider (MNPSP) to query the database of the Donor Operator on real time basis to obtain the response for the queries. Based on the result of queries made by MNPSP and fulfilment of other prescribed conditions, the allocation and delivery of UPC shall be ensured by MNPSP.

7. Initially, it was envisaged that all the Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) will come on-board to Central Monitoring System (CMS) before the implementation of the amendment of regulations and accordingly time period of one day was considered sufficient for porting. However, upon receipt of a communication and suggestion from Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on the porting timelines; in the final regulation (amendment), porting timeline of 2 working days has been provisioned for the requests of Intra-Licensed Service Area (Intra-LSA) numbers except the requests made under corporate category and the timelines of 4 working days has been provisioned for all the porting requests of Inter-Licensed Service Area (Inter-LSA) numbers and corporate category.

8. Besides above, other major changes have been incorporated such as the validity of UPC has been kept 4 days in place of 15 days earlier for all LSAs except for the LSAs of Jammu 86 Kashmir, Assam and North East for which the validity of UPC remains unchanged. Process for withdrawal of porting requests has been made simpler and quicker through SMS. For the cases of corporate porting, present limit of 50 numbers in single authorization letter has been enhanced to 100 numbers per authorization letter. Provisions for the Financial Disincentives have been broadened upon contravention of the provisions of MNP Regulations. Post implementation of this regulation (amendment), appropriate Quality of Service (QoS) parameters will be devised by the Authority to monitor the role of MNPSPs and Access Providers in the new scenario.

9. The "Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2018" is available on TRAI's website.

Tags : Number Portability Regulations Release

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