Pre-consultation paper by TRAI for pan-India MNP

February 24, 2013

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released pre-consultation paper for the implementation of the pan-India Mobile Number Portability (MNP). Through this pre-consultation paper, the Authority has sought views from stakeholders on various issues like optimum method of implementing Inter-service area porting, amendments required in the existing licence conditions of the MNP service licence, generation of UPC by roaming subscriber, modifications required in the MNP regulations etc.

The pan-India MNP was one of the key constituents of the National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP 2012).

In addition to this facility, the government also intends to abolish roaming charges as per the NTP 2012. The move is being opposed by the telecom operators as it could cause them a revenue loss of about Rs. 13,500 crore.

What are the objectives of NTP 2012?

NTP 2012 aims at:

Abolishing roaming charges on mobile phones
Allow users to hold the same number across the country without paying any extra charge
Delinking spectrum allocation from Licensing
Increasing Tele-density in rural areas
NTP mentions Cloud computing, Next-Generation Networks, IPV6 and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) as thrust areas of future technologies.

The policy also allows national number portability, but again, with no visible timelines.

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