Mobile Number Portability (MNP) - Game Changer or Damp Squib..!!!
For the much touted Mobile Number Portability aka MNP, the stats are out: launched nationwide on 20 Jan 2011, out of 750 million plus mobile subscribers, less than 5 million have opted to change their Service Providers. In percentage terms it's less than a percentage of the subscriber population.
Hyped a lot vide the marketing monies spent on MNP campaigns by various Service Providers featuring silver screen glitterati and discussed at length on various business and news TV channels; in sheer numerical terms MNP turned out to be a damp squib.
However it may be too early to write off MNP. MNP is not similar to a one time promo scheme that its effectiveness can be gauged by sheer numbers. It's a policy that shifts the balance of power in the hands of subscribers. It gives subscribers a tool to show discontent to their existing Service Providers.
Some reasons that have so far contributed to low uptake of MNP are:
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Lack of wide scale subscriber education. Subscribers are still not clear on the modalities to change their Service Providers.
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Huge numbers skew in favor of prepaid subscribers and the demographic profile that forms the prepaid subscriber base. Especially the youth who are not chief wage earners, do not put lot of weightage on the value of retaining their existing numbers. Value for money tariff plans are a huge influencer for this segment of users.
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Not much differentiation in the tariffs and the service levels provided by Service Providers, since telecom is a highly regulated industry in India.
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Not much differentiation in VAS content and offerings across Service Providers. The same set of developers/publishers/aggregators make their content available across various Service Providers thus enabling effective monetization of their content. Sometimes the content offered by a particular Service Providers is exclusive to its subscribers, but exclusivity is limited to a few weeks or month's time.
Though it's not even three months since the introduction of MNP, it's difficult to put a verdict to it. It's a welcome introduction by TRAI and will go a long way in ensuring better quality of service to subscribers.
