Asia Bizz: The Mobile Number Portability (MNP) feature was launched in India on the 20th of January 2011, but as it was expected, this service has not done well in the telecom market. Till date, only two lakh portability requests have been received from the people across the country, but this is next to negligible.
With only two hundred thousand requests received and more than 700 million customers in India, this figure is not impressive at all. One of the main reasons the MNP service has got a lukewarm response is because the service has entered India almost three years late. Looking at the statistics, the number of postpaid customers are way less than the Prepaid ones, but they are given the top priority and they have not turned out as expected.
Reports show that the operating cost of the feature too will shoot up, as the number of subscribers move towards it. As of now, the customers in India will not thrive to adopt to MNP, because the Double SIM trend has already in stepped into the country. If there is a need to switch numbers, people would only add another SIM of a different carrier on their phones.
Critics also say that since the services of of network providers has drastically improved over the past few years, a lot of customers have chosen to remain with their current providers instead of switching to competitors.
