The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI ) on Friday issued draft ‘Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Per Port Transaction Charge (PPTC) and Dipping Charge (Amendment) Regulations) 2019’ seeking comments from stakeholders by August 23.

Through notification of the Telecommunication Tariff (49th Amendment) Order, 2009, the Authority prescribed the per port transaction charge of ₹19 as ceiling for the tariff that could be charged from subscriber by the recipient operator. The ‘dipping charge’ was kept under forbearance.

Last year, the PPTC was reviewed based on the actual financial and non-financial data of both the mobile number portability service providers (MNPSPs) as available for the financial year 2016-17.

Accordingly, TRAI issued the Telecommunications Mobile Number Portability Per Port Transaction Charge and Dipping Charge (Amendment) Regulations, 2018 on January 31 last year whereby per port transaction charge was reduced from ₹19 to ₹4 for each successful porting.

However, this amendment regulation was quashed by High Court of Delhi.

Therefore, TRAI has decided that the present amendment to the PPTC would come into effect from September 30 and before that it has invited the stakeholders to send their written comments on the draft regulations so that the final inputs can be corroborated, if any.

“As abundant opportunity has already been given to the stakeholders to provide inputs since the issue of Consultation Paper on February 22, 2019, this may be treated as the final opportunity to give inputs, before finalisation of current consultation exercise,” TRAI said.

Some of the issues it asked the stakeholders include – whether the PPTC should continue to be calculated based on the methodology adopted by TRAI during the review done in the past?; while calculating PPTC, whether the total number of MNP requests received by MNPSP or successfully ported numbers be considered? And; should the charges for ‘per port transaction’ and ‘ancillary services’ be determined separately or consolidated charges.

Also, whether the dipping charge, which is presently under forbearance, needs to be reviewed? And whether the porting charge payable by the subscriber to the recipient operator should continue to be prescribed as a ceiling charge as per the current practice, it added.

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