TRAI moves court against Loop Mobiles on MNP

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has moved a Delhi court seeking prosecution of Loop Mobiles (India) Ltd for rejecting its subscribers' requests to switch over to another service providers in violation of TRAI regulations.

The TRAI has sought Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav's direction to summon and prosecute Loop Mobiles, its Managing Director Sandip Basu and Chief Regulatory Officer Harish Kapoor for rejecting subscribers' requests for number portability.

It alleged Loop Mobiles rejected some requests for number portability in Mumbai circle as it was "not in consonance with the provisions of the Telecom Mobile Number Portability Regulations".

"Regulation 12 (Telecom Portability Regulations) does not provide for rejection of porting requests on ground of Act of God and rejection under the category are not in consonance with the provisions of the said regulation," TRAI said in its complaint.

The telecom regulator said after it launched mobile number portability in January 2011, it directed all service providers including Loop to furnish compliance of various provisions of the Telecom Portability Regulations.

It said to ascertain correctness of compliance given by Loop, TRAI obtained data pertaining to rejections of porting requests by the company in Mumbai circle and observed that it had rejected a number of such requests under the category of "act of God" and certain on ground of "contractual obligations" and "outstanding payment dues".