Number portability has already been introduced in India, but currently users can only change their service providers who operate in the same geographical location. However, the Telecom Regulatory of India has announced that very soon users in the country will be able to change their operators even if they are migrating to a different state.
The regulatory body had invited inputs and comments from stakeholders regarding various aspects of the implementation. These include methods to implement inter-service area porting, various issues related to porting requests, routing as well as charging of calls, method to be undertaken for generating UPC codes for roaming clients, amendments to be made to the current licensing of the service providers and modifications for the current regulations.
Stakeholders presented their opinions, but there was a huge difference in criteria that were suggested. Thus, TRAI decided to form a focus group of representatives from MNP and telecom service providers and a report was submitted to the regulation board, based on which the latter came up with some amendments.
TRAI is giving telecom operators six months to implement pan-India number portability. On successfully porting a number, the new operator will have to forward the porting request to the number’s previous MNP service provider. Some modifications to the license have also been introduced and the fee for testing various scenarios in full MNP will be 25 percent of the current charges.
So finally it would be possible to retain your phone number and simply change the service provider, even if you are moving to another city or another state anywhere in India.