The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), on Monday, asked the Department of Telecom not to make any changes in the entry fee and bank guarantee of companies involved in managing mobile number portability (MNP) service.
“The authority is of the opinion that there seems no justification for any enhancement of the entry fee for mobile number portability (MNP) licensees for implementing full mobile number portability. The authority recommends no enhancement of the entry fee for MNP licensees,” the regulator said in its reply to the Department of Telecom (DoT).
Nationwide or full MNP will allow mobile subscribers to shift their mobile service on to network of any telecom operator throughout the country while retaining same number. At present, MNP allows to change network within the same telecom circle.
DoT had sent a reference to TRAI seeking its recommendations on additional entry fee, performance bank guarantee (PBG) and financial bank guarantee (FBG) to be charged from the existing MNP licensees for enhancement of scope of their licence.
At present, two companies Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnection Telecom Solution operate to provide MNP service.
TRAI said that these companies had still around five years before their licence validity expires.
The regulator said that the potential subscribers to avail themselves of nationwide MNP would be small. Besides, MNP service providers will have to incur cost to bring change in their infrastructure to provide nationwide MNP.
“These service providers are only the per port transaction charge of Rs.19 received from the access providers (mobile operators). They are dependent on the porting volumes alone to recover this cost and earn profits. As the porting volumes for full MNP is not evident, recovering the cost for modifications is already a concern to them,” TRAI said.
The regulator recommended that it is of the view that that the PBG for the MNP service providers should be continued as per the existing licence conditions, which is Rs.1 crore at present.
An amount equal to 50 per cent of PBG may be kept till the end of their licence period, and any excess amount pending with DoT should be released immediately, it added.
