Nearly eight months after cell-phone users were given the opportunity to switch to a different telecom service provider without foregoing their mobile numbers, the growth in requests for Mobile Number Portability (as the service is known) is showing a downward trend.However, the total number of such requests is increasing, touching 1.06 crore by the May-end.

MNP was launched across the country in January this year, and by February-end, requests for changing telecom operators had touched 38.33 lakh. By March-end, the number of subscribers wanting out had shot up to 64.23 lakh, a jump of nearly 68 per cent. Since then, however, the growth percentage of dissatisfied talkers requesting such a change had dipped to 33 per cent in April and 24 per cent the following month.

One key reason why subscribers have decided to change their service providers is due to connectivity issues. In fact, a recent study undertaken by AbsolutData Technologies, a market research and analytics service provider, has shown that nearly a third of the respondents (out of a sample size of 1,404 people) cited connectivity problem as the chief reason for opting out. Interestingly, an equally compelling reason why people chose to retain their existing telecom operator was due to good service. The study revealed that around 88 per cent of the respondents were satisfied with their existing mobile service providers, and that around 73 per cent were not keen on switching operators. Many customers have also reverted to their original service providers after switching operators using the MNP facility. According to the AbsolutData study, 25 per cent of those subscribers who had made that shift initially regretted doing so, and out of this 25 per cent, a little over half (or 54 per cent) had come right back to their original service providers.

Airtel, which according to the Cellular Operators' Association of India (the mobile service providers' lobby) had the highest market share –at 28.31 per cent –in May, said that it has indeed benefitted from people returning to its network.

“We are seeing an increasing trend of customers, who moved out of Airtel, porting back,” an Airtel spokesperson said.

Even so, if one were to consider the portability requests as a percentage of the total subscriber additions for any given month, then there has been a steady growth in this ratio. While it was 0.48 per cent in February (that is, for every 100 new subscribers added each month, 0.48 per cent of existing subscribers were opting for a different operator), the ratio had jumped to 1.25 per cent in May.

And, if one considers the visitor location register, another variable that is a truer reflection of the actual number of active mobile users, then the MNP requests have shown an upward trend, with the ratio likely to touch 2 per cent in the next month or two.

For example, in May, while the reported subscriber level stood at 8,402.80 lakh, as per the visitor location register (VLR) metric it was only 5,881.30 lakh. The difference (of 2,521.50 lakh) may represent mobile phones that have either been switched off or connections that are not active. So, if we consider the VLR metric, then the percentage of people opting for MNP has been steadily on the up.

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