Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) also said that the price for MNP should be reduced to Rs 2 or be removed altogether. However, the MNP providers were against this price cut and want the charge to stay at Rs. 19.
The TRAI said that the decision of reducing the price for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is based on the fact that the cost of the MNP services has gone down. This all happens because the number of users trying to port their number has grown by “leaps and bounds”; the price reduction is coming into effect immediately. Rajan S. Mathews, who represents GSM telcos and is the Director General of COAI, said, “We welcome the decision of TRAI to reduce the MNP per port transaction charge to Rs. 4 for each successful porting request.” He also said that the decision of the price cut was a long due and operators were also requested to bring down this charge. The regulator said about the price cut, “After taking into consideration the views/ comments received from stakeholders and the other relevant facts, the Authority has decided that the per port transaction charge may be reduced as the costs of operations of MNP service providers have substantially gone down and at the same time the volume of MNP traffic has increased by leaps and bounds. As a result of this amendment, there will be an automatic reduction in the ceiling of the charges leviable from subscribers for MNP from Rs 19 to Rs 4.”
