The Telecom Churn: Requests for mobile number portability peak again

The telecom industry continues to go through a churn. Announcement of tariff hikes by all the three players shows how paramount are revenue considerations despite one company — Vodafone Idea Limited — losing out subscribers to the two leaders Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.

But a new trend has gathered momentum in the last year or so. Mobile Number Portability, or MNP requests have hit a peak, nearly three to four years after the entry of Jio rattled the telecom space.

Indian mobile consumers have made close to 30 million MNP requests each quarter in the last three, or in other words, close to 90 million requests in the January - September 2021 period. This quarterly rate is the highest since the two quarters of 2018 when Jio grabbed subscribers from Airtel and Vodafone+Idea, a year after its entry.

More than anything, the year 2021 was of economic recovery, and work-from-home. People demanded, and used, high quality internet from their homes for work purposes. This could be one reason for high portability requests, as the public may have chosen to switch for a better and faster network according to region.