The number of customers putting in requesting for porting number from one operator to another has reached 85.4 lakh or about 1.45% of India’s total active subscriber base, three months after it was introduced.
The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said the highest number of requests came from Gujarat and Rajasthan, at 8.34 lakh and 7.11 lakh each, followed by Karnataka and Tamil Nadu with around 6-7 lakh requests each.
At the end of February this year, nearly a month after it was started, the number was 38 lakhs which climbed to 64.2 lakhs at the end of March. The April number, therefore, slows a marked slow down in the number of people preferring to opt out of a network due to various reasons.
While nearly 30 lakhs of people chose to activate MNP in February and 26 lakhs did so in March, in April, it was only around 21 lakhs.
“This was expected, since the first month or two would see a lot of people who have been waiting for MNP, exercise their option. But it would decline over the months, as most of the dissatisfied customers churn out,” pointed out an industry official.
Despite all this, many operators are actively blocking the MNP program under the pretext of server problems and other such issues.
According to industry sources, Idea and Vodafone have proven to be the most sought after MNP networks, with more people joining them than leaving them.
