Mobile Number Portability: NCC highlights subscribers’responsibilities

Eugene Ikemefuna Juwah, the Executive Vice Chairman, NCC

Prior to the official start of the long-awaited Mobile Number Portability service, the Nigerian Communications Commission has listed roles expected of stakeholders, particularly telecoms subscribers, towards making it work.

While service providers and the regulator are getting set to roll out the service, the NCC said certain important roles were expected from the subscribers using the over 113 million active telephone lines in the country and who might want to port their numbers.

The Interconnect Clearing House, which has been appointed by the NCC to create a unified interface billing system, is currently rounding off the exercise by bringing service provider networks on the mobile number portability platform.

MNP is a new telecoms service that will commence very soon in the nation’s telecoms sector and is being touted to address many of the ills in the industry, especially in quality of service.

 The service will allow subscribers to change operators without changing numbers.

Already, the Minister of Communication Technology, Mrs. Omobola Johnson, recently gave an assurance of the readiness of the government to start the MNP service soon.

She had said, “We are going ahead with MNP because it is going to give subscribers lots of choice and freedom. MNP will bring new dimension to the competition in the industry. All network operators will have to work harder to earn the trust of subscribers, because they will now have choices.

“MNP will definitely give consumer varieties of choice but the major issue is for us to improve on our infrastructure and improve services so that we don’t have to be moving from network to network.”

 Explaining how telecoms subscribers will benefit from the scheme, the Executive Vice Chairman, NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, said when a phone user felt that another operator could offer him a better service than his current operator, MNP would allow him to move and enjoy the coverage, quality or tariff of the new operator, while retaining his old number.

Juwah said with MNP, there were roles to be played by the subscriber, which would make the process effective and successful, especially in validating the SIM card registration process.

He said, “The number to be ported must be a SIM registered number with your current operator. The subscriber must physically visit the retail store/customer outlet of the new operator.

‘‘A photo identification card must be presented to the new operator. This, therefore, means that there will be no proxy porting process. Also, a porting will be completed within 48 hours from the port request.”

According to Juwah, MNP is a simple process and will be free. For the porting process not to be subject to abuse and arbitrariness, he said there would be porting windows, which is the time within which an already ported number can be ported again.

“So, stakeholders will have to play their relevant roles for the process to work instead of waiting for the regulator to wave a magic wand to right everything. MNP is a significant process that the regulator is embarking on at this time after all necessary documentation, and will be guided to successful implementation,” he said.

The President, Association of Telecoms Companies for Nigeria, Mr. Lanre Ajayi, had recently called on the NCC to ensure that all necessary measures were put in place before unveiling the service to avoid possible network problem.

 In the same vein, the President, National Association Telecoms Subscribers, Chief Deolu Ogunbanjo, said the MNP was being anticipated by subscribers as it would lead to improved services and address the multi-SIM scenario among telecoms subscribers, since one single SIM could be used to initiate calls from any of the networks.

Already, the commission has released the guideline detailing the rules and regulations for implementing the MNP service in Nigeria. The document titled: ‘Nigeria Mobile Number Portability: Business Rules and Port Order’, sets out the business rules to manage the processes for porting mobile number(s) between service providers and subscribers licensed by the NCC to provide mobile telecoms service in the country.

The document, however, refers only to MNP, which means it does not cover Fixed Number Portability or any other form of number or service portability.

According to the commission in the introductory message, the document has been prepared without prejudice to any future requirement for number portability between fixed and/or mobile customers.

The document read in part, “In furtherance to the NCC’s objectives of protecting consumer interest through the development, monitoring and enforcement of compliance with regulations by telecoms service providers in order to ensure better quality services, fair pricing and competition, and in line with the provisions of section 128 of the Nigerian Communication Act, 2003, which vests the NCC with the exclusive right to regulate numbers and number portability in Nigeria, the commission developed a framework for number portability in Nigeria.”

: PUNCH