Science & Technology

The number of migrated subscribers from one operator’ network to another has witnessed a substantial increase in the last year with more than a 100 percent growth, showing in a year to reach 10.642 million benchmark by March 2011 end.

Pakistan Telecommu-nication Authority (PTA) statistics showed an increased of 7.2 million subscribers who switched over their network from other with the facility of Mobile Number Portability (MNP). The number of subscribers migrated from one cellular companies’ network from other has been reported to reach 3.44 million in March 2010.

MNP is a system that facilitates mobile phone users to switch over their mobile phone network without changing personal number and code. The cellular phone users carried out change of network because of service quality, affordability of tariffs, choice of bundle packages and value-added services offered by different service provider.

The average number of subscribers, who shifted from old to new network have been recorded at 600,000 in the last 12 months period that showed a tremendous success of the system and its usage.

MNP is an important mechanism to enhance fair competition among different Cellular Mobile Operators (CMO), which improves quality of service offered by them.

Pakistan is the first country in South Asia to implement the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in March 2007 within a record time period of two years.

In Pakistan, MNP is regulated under provisions of “Number Portability Regulations” and “Porting Process Guidelines”. Normal porting time for both Pre-Paid and Post-Paid subscribers is 4-days after the subscriber settles his contractual obligations with concerned donor operator.

Pakistan Mobile Number Portability Database (Guarantee) Limited (PMD) was established by the six cellular mobile operators to act as a centralised clearinghouse for MNP.

“As it is becoming difficult to acquire new customers in the highly saturated market, cellular phone operators are engaged in intense wrestling of gaining each other’s subscribers on their networks by MNP,”.

The cellular phone operators are left with no option but to attract each other’s customers in the deeply saturated market of the country. Therefore, they are aggressively working to promote portability service through attractive packages to customers.

“Operators with comparatively small subscribers’ base are more actively engaged in offering attract packages to pluck the subscribers of each other’s network,”.

Mobile phone operators’ full-fledge advertisements and marketing campaigns have become fruitful for them for broadening of subscribers’ base. Also, the operators are now more cautious for improving their services and offering new packages in order to retain their subscribers.

The subscribers can migrate from their existing network to another with the same code and number more than one time with a gap of three months. The migration is completed within a couple of days by the operator against minimal charges.

By the end of December 2010, there were more than 102 million subscribers of the mobile phone operators. Mobilink is the market leader with highest number of subscribers at 31.7 million followed by Telenor with 24.69 million subscribers. Ufone and Warid’s users’ bases reached 20.27 million and 17.51 million respectively. While Zong subscribers are said to have touched 8.5 million mark.