Few takers for MNP in North-East

Contrary to expectations, mobile number portability (MNP) has not brought any churn in the telecom sector of North-East, with only 0.1 per cent of the subscribers availing this service till now in the region. The national figure of 0.5 per cent too is nothing to write home about.  

“The industry and media conjectures have proved wrong. MNP has not brought any boom in the telecom sector,” admitted Atul Mohan Bindal, president, mobile services, Bharti Airtel. 

Industry expected that with the launch of MNP, a large chunk of subscribers would change their service providers, thus bringing a telecom revolution in the country.   

MNP was launched in latter half of January and gave the subscribers the choice to switch to other service providers in the same circle without changing their numbers. 

Contrary to the industry expectation, most of the applications for changing service provides have come from low-end prepaid, and not from post-paid subscribes. 

According to Bindal, till now only the leading operators have gained from number portability, and the CDMA service providers have been the biggest losers.