INTRODUCTION MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY MEANS THE FACILITY WHICH ALLOWS A SUBSCRIBER TO RETAIN HIS MOBILE TELEPHONE

Transcription

1 INTRODUCTION MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY MEANS THE FACILITY WHICH 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. -TRAI Notification, 23/09/2009 ( To start our discussion on mobile number portability it would be more logical to have an overview of transitions of Indian telecom industry post liberalization, to get into more in-depth understanding of telecom industry,government s role, private partnership and its contribution and public interest. It was the year 1981, when liberalization in Indian telecom industry started and this initiation was taken by Indian Government led by Prime Minister Ship of Smt. Indira Gandhi, when she signed a contract with Alcatel CIT, a France Based Company. This contract was made to merge the state owned telecom company ITI with clause that new venture will be committed to establish 50,000,000 new lines per year. But because of political oppose, this contract couldn t take place and Smt. Indira Gandhi had taken back her steps. One more effort had made by her ancestor government led by Prime Minister Ship of Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, when he appointed Mr. Sam Pittroda, a USA based NRI as advisor and consultant and asked him to set up C-DOT (Centre for Developme nts of Telematics) under the shadow of Post and Telecommunication Department. C-DOT manufactured telephone exchange in India first time. Later in 1985 C- DOT became a separate entity and in 1986 two new organizations came in existence -Mahanagar

2 Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). In 1990s government led by Dr. P.V. Nersimha Rao was facing severe fiscal crisis and balance payment issue, they were feeling heat to open up the telecommunication industry for private sector and implement liberalization policies. It was implemented first for VAS and followed by private investments in basic and cellular services. Amendments have been taken place in National telecom Policy. In the first phase whole India was divided into 20 circles (currently 23 circles) in three basic categories A,B & C depending on revenue size. Rao Government though liberalize local calls but put off foreign involvement in long distance calls for five years. Government ensures unmolested implementation of policies and business run besides of oppositions faced from political opponents, other interlinked government departments and labour unions. I 1997 one more organization came into existence named as Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). In 1997, government led by Prime Minister Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee has taken charge& continues the chain of reforms. They introduced new establishment Department of Telecommunication Services (DTS) formerly known as an operation wing of DoT and later known as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited. Under thestrong pressure of domestic business groups, government decided to reduce to stake 56% to 26% in VSNL. TATA succeeded to take over 25% stakes in VSNL. In March 2000, government decided to give licenses to private operators by liberalizing their policies and reducing license fees for private operators and allowed them to get foreign investment up to 74%. It results finally in call cost cuts and more sophisticated and quality services to customers. And the chain of this kind of phenomena continued for several years. Many private operators came into the industry like Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communication Essar Telecom, Loop Mobiles, Idea Airtel, Vodafone, MTS etc. and they started serving consumers.

3 India has opted both mode of technologies GSM(Global System for Mobile Communication) & CDMA(Code Division Multiple Acce0ss). Government has issued licenses for each circle separately. Telecom industry has grown exponentially along with intro of new and updated technologies. In India operators are providing services for 2G, 3G 4G and recently LTE testing network has also started in Chandigarh. Total number of telephones in the country reached to million on 31 st October 2013 with a teledenisity of 73.32% growth in respect of previous year. It is also remarkable that total no of mobile subscriber have reached to million and mobile tele-denisity increased to 70.96%. If we talk about wireless users added then 4.90 million subscribers added in 31 st October And wireline subscriber was million in 31 st October isuppli a research organization, has made a survey on Indian Telecommunication Market and stated that by the end of 2014, 98% of Indians will own mobile. 2 Obviously market potential will grow. In very initial phase, communication devices like Telephone, Pagers & cell phones were used only for business requirement by white collar professionals but with changing time and lifestyle now cell phones have become style cum status statement. Basically two types of players are engaged in the process of providing cellular services first one are equipment manufacturer like Nokia, Samsung, LG, Intex etc. and on the other hand network service provider companies are. Both are integral part of the industry. For example any person if make a purchase of a cell phone equipment then definitely he will subscribe network services either to avail voice call services or data services and vice versa. Because a sim without inserting any mobile communication equipment, is of no use. As it has been discussed in earlier paragraphs that after liberalisation, there is no 1 TRAI Annual Report % Indians would own a mobile by 2014, The Mobile Indian New Delhi, September 2010.

4 monopoly in the market. There are a number of network service providers and each and every player has equal& fair opportunity to do the business and increase the market share by offering their services to the customers. But on the vice versa it was not true in real sense. For example suppose Mohan is Airtel service and Airtel subscription id i.e. mobile number is 9918****20. Now suppose Mohan works in an office as a sales manager. AIRTEL s signal strength in that particular area is very pour while Vodafone s signal strength is good enough. This is why Mohan wants to change his operator but he doesn t want to change his mobile number. He was free to change MSP but new MSP will offer new mobile number not only this but also customer has to incur some switching cost. For example he will make voice calls or will send SMS to his contacts to inform them about new number, he would have to take new printed visiting cards or business broachers with new mobile number. On a prima facie it was not equal & fair opportunity to choose the network services for customers as well. It happened possible only after introduction of Mobile Number Portability. MNP empowers customer not only to change their mobile service provider with retention of same mobile number but save switching costs as well. TRAI has published and communicated well defined regulations that all Indian network providers are obliged to provide unique porting number on the request of all the subscriber for mobile number of portability in entire network without any kind of discrimination i.e. every NSP has to ensure hassle free disembark to all the commuters in entire network without any discrimination.the existing network service provider is known as donor network and the network who conceive the subscriber and resume the services is known as recipient network. Switching phenomenon from one NSP to another NSP is known as Porting. 3 Customer could generate request for porting only in their service area i.e. in their home network. As per TRAI guidelines whole procedure should not take more than seven working days except to J&K, ASAM and North East States. To generate porting request subscriber has to call on 1900 and he will receive a unique porting number. With 3 TRAI Guidelines -

5 number he has to go to his/her preferred MSP with documents. Subscriber has also do purchase a new sim card of recipient network. Porting charge has been fixed maximum to 19. Ones porting done, subscriber will be strained to use recipient network services at least 90 days, only after 90 days subscriber could go for MNP again. This is limitation of MNP. Gujrat ( ),Andhra Pradesh( ), Karnatka( ) & Rajasthan( ) are four major leading states in terms of proting request generation for MNP. Noth East(182123), Asam(390173), Jammu & Kashmir(19144). Orisa( ), Bihar( ) are the four states having lowest number of porting request. 4 Various studies done on MNP and consumer responses shows that customer has adopted MNP in a good number because of numerous region mostly because of lower call rate, network quality in their visiting and home locations, Value added services, etc. There are a significant number of subscribers who adopted mobile number portability just to try it. In fact we could segment mobile subscribers in four groups Innovators 2.5% Early Adopters 13.5% Early Majority 34% Late Majority 34% Laggards 16% Innovator Early Adopter Early Majority Late majority Legards 2.5% 13.5% 4 TRAI press Release No. 13/2014

6 34% 34% 16% Above graph shows that a trend that how subscribers are trafficking from one operator to another. This movement changed the competition scenario and the focus moved on making strategies to retain the customer as well not only to gain the edge in acquiring only new subscribers. This shows how the MNP is important in changing the face of the industry 5. From the inception of MNP policy in country around 150 million mobile subscriber has been registered porting request and total number of mobile subscribers is 950 million in country. So on an average,we could say, that around 14%-15% mobile service subscribers have tried at least once in their consumer life, mobile number portability service.this Volatile nature of consumers in a significant number,has forced to change the game rules in Indian telecom industry,. In fact when 2G licence allotment has been reopened for new operators,in that period MNP has been adopted by mobile subscribers much more than other periods. In the rural market studies shows,price war and network quality were the most dominant factor responsible for MNP. We can understand that how it brought changes in the strategies of the network service providers. This was the reason Airtel has strengthen its network quality even in most remote areas and become biggest shareholders in telecommunication market in India followed by Vodafone. New telecom players made the adopted the marketing strategies focus not only on acquiring new mobile service subscribers but also emphasised to snatch existing mobile subscribers of other network service providers. Infact this is very contemporary and become more in more practice as long as teledencity will 5 Rozer Study

7 increase.in the forthcoming years MNP related marketing strategies are going to prove as biggest revenue increasing tool and it will compel to network service providers to offer new facilities,more add ons and good network on a very competitive cost. Consumer behaviour,their product knowledge and their awareness will play an important role. Consumer demand changing continuously with time and life style. This is very known fact that the new generation is more techno-savvy and they insist on data services,application uses, social sites activities and wants everything on their tip as soon as possible rather than sensitivity of call cost or only on network or brand name. They want every good with them.they don t have tolerance for any bad,so forth coming years in telecom industry toughest era and this is but obvious that MNP will be most dominating and will be in centre of all companies marketing strategies. Thus, from the above exploratory introduction it is clear that research from some new aspect in correlation with changing consumer behaviour, their social status, economy, their needs and wants is time demanded and contemporary. Historical Consonant Government issued guidelines on MNP service license on 01/08/2008 as per TRAI recommendations. TRAI published MNP draft on its website seeking opinions and consultations from MSP s & general public on 30/06/2009 with deadline 31/07/2009.

8 TRAI published &communicated Telecommunication MNP Regulation2009 on 23/09/2009. TRAI published & communicated Telecommunication MNP Regulation2010 with some amendments on 28/01/2010. From 20/01/2011, MNP is into effect all over country onward. Idea Cellular was the first network service provider, who ado Overall tele-density of the country was 72.18% 6 as on 31 st January million requests have been made for porting till 31 st January DoT has identified two MNP service providers (MNPSPs), Syniverse and Telcordia for two zones. Syniverse is covering in 11 telecom circle in North and West part of India & Telcordia is covering South & East 6 TRAI press Release No. 13/ TRAI press Release No. 13/2014