The ‘Immobile’ Phone Number: TRAI Floats Paper On Porting Costs, Invites Industry To Discuss Dwindling Trend

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) plans to review the per-port transaction charge and related ancillary levies for mobile number portability (MNP), reports Economic Times.

The report comes at a time when monthly porting requests are falling, especially after consolidation of telecom majors.

Once a mobile user moves from one service provider to another, the recipient telecom operator generally pays a per-porting transaction charge to the MNP service provider for processing the porting requests.

In January 2018, the per-port transaction charge was reduced from Rs 19 to Rs 4 by TRAI.

“Data on MNP for the last one year shows the number of port requests per month is declining. TRAI may, therefore, review the existing per-port transaction charges at the end of one year,” the body was quoted as saying in the report.

TRAI has sought industry views on whether it should use the current methodology to compute per-port transaction charge, or whether there should be a change.

The regulator has also urged stakeholders to suggest an alternative method, along with detailed calculations, in case they want a change in formula.