The mobile telecom operators have made little progress regarding mobile number portability (MNP) although less than six months is left of the time that the government had fixed for it.
The MNP gives users freedom to switch between operators without changing their phone numbers for a certain minimal transfer fee.
On June 13, Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) directed the operators to launch MNP services by January 2014.
But the operators strongly objected, saying the time given for implementation was too little.
“Everybody in the industry is open about the service. But we told the BTRC that proper consultation was needed,” Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer of Grameenphone, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“Grameenphone does not have any problem in opening up MNP services. But the BTRC gave us only seven months’ time.We need at least 18 months to take preparations.”
The operators also said apart from the time constraints they had many other issues that needed addressing.
According to the existing guidelines, a user can switch their operator after every 45 days by paying Tk50.
The operators said they subsidised Tk300 as tax for every SIM card. They asked the BTRC what would happen to the tax they had paid if the user decided to switch an operator after 45 days.
Apparently, the BTRC failed to give a satisfactory answer to that question.
During a meeting with BTRC Chairman Sunil Kanti Bose in July, the CEOs of mobile operators said controlling crime would be difficult after introducing MNP because there was no proper SIM registration system in place.
Pakistan, the first country in South Asia to set up MNP, stopped the service after three years of launch on security grounds.
The operators requested the regulator to sit with them regarding the issues that they had raised.
Pointing out these issues, the Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (Amtob) earlier sent a letter to the BTRC, seeking at least two years’ time for implementing MNP.
Amtob said investing for portability would be really burdensome for the operators if they also had to launch 3G services at the same time.
M Didarul Alam, general manager of Robi, said: “Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Cambodia halted MNP implementation considering the investment issue.”
“As the operators have raised some issues, we need to rethink about it and fix another timeframe after consultation,” a high official of the BTRC System and Service division said.
The BTRC, in a bid to bring up MNP, made a guideline in 2008. But the operators did not reciprocate the effort then.
The process regained momentum in 2012 after the parliamentary standing committee on the telecommunication ministry recommended setting up MNP within that year.
MNP in India, implemented in 2011, is handled by a third party. A customer has to pay Rs19 for availing the service which takes seven days to port a number from one switch to another.
In Thailand, the MNP costs 99 Baht while the service is free in Malaysia.
More than 70 countries in the world are currently enjoying MNP services.
