Take Your Number with You Date:   Wednesday , May 04, 2011 Mobile number porting (MNP) is not a new concept. In the West, regulations mandate Mobile service providers to facilitate a seamless move between mobile operators, unless they are under contract. This has triggered price & feature wars among mobile operators making mobile technology & service offerings trendier. Back home, in India, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has regulated mobile operators to rollout these porting facilities, which have so far proven to be quite a success. There are multiple reasons for switching operators, ranging from changes in individual usage and demand patterns to changing price and quality propositions. The staggered introduction of MNP internationally provides useful natural data that can be used to derive statistics for the Indian market as well. It is seen that lower porting time is typically associated with increased customer switching and lower prices, whereas with less stringent porting time, there is no significant churn or revenue effects. The benefits from MNP are to both: * Consumers that actually switch owing to MNP avoid costs of number change * Consumers that stay with the operator, and get wider benefits owing to intense competition among mobile network providers introduced by MNP. In summary, there is considerable benefit to all consumers, provided the whole process is well publicized and made simple such that it is easy to adopt. Nevertheless, Mobile network providers are now forced to grapple with finding solutions to challenges such as: 1. Retaining the existing customer base 2. Expanding their footprint to garner a greater market share Some of the initiatives undertaken by mobile network providers to address the above challenges include: Contract based offerings, Loyalty and Rewards, Phone fund for pre-paid customers, Match deal offerings, premium customer service and more, to name a few. Some providers also offer significant discounts if a customer moves to their network. The porting process itself, in fact is rather simple. Your existing operator provides porting authorization code when you initiate a move. This, when made available to the new operator during the registration process, kicks-off the `Number Transfer`. It may take a day or two to get the number transferred on to the new network. The real Challenge in the post MNP world would be to deliver quality, variety, fast & dependable service at an efficient cost. The THBS framework also caters to these needs. Ultimately, consumer retentions (once porting is introduced) would depend on value for money, features and good customer service from mobile operators. We have delivered successfully several Fast track projects and customizable solutions enabling business teams to add products & services to keep our clients ahead of the game. The author is Regional Manager (Technical Services), Torry Harris Business Solutions