TRAI issues consultation paper on MNP to resolve difficulties faced by subscribers

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued paper on 'Review of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) process' to resolve inconveniences being faced by customers.

The regulator said that "Due to recent closure/ discontinuation of wireless access services by some of the Telecom Service Providers (TSPs) in few or all the Licensed Service Areas (LSAs), the substantial number of subscribers have been forced to port their mobile number to other TSPs."

"Consequent upon closure/ discontinuation of the services, TRAI has received a large number of complaints related to the difficulties faced by the subscribers of these service providers in porting their mobile numbers."

The notification said that, major issues are non-generation of Unique Porting Code (UPC) by the Donor Operator or non-receipt of UPC by the subscriber, multiple times rejection of porting requests by donor operators on various grounds of rejections prescribed in regulation 12 of the MNP regulations, instances of fraudulent porting, issuance of interim bills for postpaid subscribers, non-refund of the prepaid balance and security deposits of postpaid subscribers. These issues create inconvenience and dissatisfaction to the mobile subscribers.

These issues create inconvenience and dissatisfaction to the mobile subscribers."

Written comments on the issues raised in the consultation are invited from the stakeholders by May 3, 2018, and counter comments by May 17, 2018.

Meanwhile, Rajan S Mathews, DG, COAI that, this new paper will not only help the operators to send their detailed inputs to the Authority but it will also enable the Authority to address certain new issues which have emerged since the notification and applicability of the Regulation in the year 2009 and 2011 respectively.

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COAI will be providing a detailed response only after analyzing the various aspects posed by the TRAI so that any changes in the MNP process further simplify this process for the subscribers and ease the operational issues of the TSPs at the same time, Mathews further said.