Communication Minister Dayanidhi Maran has suggested that call forwarding facility should be considered as a viable alternative to number portability on mobile phones.
Number portability has been opposed by various service providers citing huge costs involved to make their networks compatible. The issue however is more complex that. The biggest lockin an operator has today is the customer’s number which doesn’t migrate even if he switches service providers. Once number portability is in place the operators cannot afford to concentrate only on customer acquistion but will have to spend time on customer satisfaction and retention too.
The government is planning to set up a joint working group this month comprising representatives of the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) and both CDMA and GSM operators. Issues to be resolved are number portability, uniform ‘’One India’’ tariff, inter-connectivity between operators and allocation of 3G spectrum. The issues are expected to be resolved by the year end.
via mobilepundit