On 20th January 2011 TRAI announced the launch of Mobile Number Facility for entire India which allowed mobile subscribers to move to a different telecom operator within their telecom circle without changing their number. As per the latest data till December 2012, 80,060,954 porting requests have been received.
And now TRAI is planning to implement Full Mobile Number Portability which will allow mobile users to port their mobile number from one telecom circle to another, which means you won’t have to change your mobile number in case you decide to migrate to any other telecom circle from your existing one.
TRAI has released a Pre-consultaion Paper on Full Mobile Number Portability to seek views from stakeholders on various issues like porting requests, routing, charging, testing etc.
TRAI said, “Mobile Number Portability (MNP) allows a subscriber to retain his mobile telephone number when he moves from one Access Provider to another irrespective of the mobile technology or from one cellular mobile technology to another of the same Access Provider. Presently the facility of MNP is restricted to the licensed service area only.”
You can read the Pre-Consultation Paper on Full Mobile Number Portability here.