The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is all set to come up with a faster mode of porting for your mobile number from one operator to another one. The Authority has released the draft in connection to the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) recommendations. To resolve the issues faced by the customers, TRAI had earlier issued a consultation paper to review the mobile number portability process. As per the new guidelines on MNP in the given draft, TRAI has proposed to reduce the total time taken by the ‘Donor Operator’ to allow the clearance of porting requests which are related to the same circle within the period of two days compared to the present four days. And as regards to a wrongful rejection of the request for porting, it has proposed a financial disincentive of “not more than Rs. 10,000”.

The TRAI made the Draft Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2018 public on Tuesday, and according to it, there are some major changes to the entire MNP process. As per the current procedure followed by the companies is that the subscriber will have to wait for a period of 4 days to get their numbers transferred from one service provider to another one. The telecom regulator has proposed to make the same procedure faster by lessening the time period for the same transfer by cutting down the processing time for the porting requests that are made within the circle. But if the porting request is from one circle to another one, then the porting requests will have to go through 4 days’ time period before it is approved.

The TRAI has also mandated two financial disincentives for telecom companies if they fail to follow the new rules in making the MNP process more hassle-free. The telecom regulator noted that companies will liable to pay a penalty up to Rs. 5,000 per contravention rules that mandates them to adhere to the new timeline. Whenever a subscriber requests an MNP request, the telecom operator will have to forward the same request to MNP service provider and here the provider will verify the eligibility of the subscriber for porting and at the end issue the code on a real-time basis. They are required to send MNP service provider, the details of subscribers within 24 hours of a porting request is made.

Moreover, subscribers are to be notified about the process via SMS to let them know the request has been accepted and is under process. It is worth noting that the regulator has proposed to reduce the validity period of the Unique Porting Code generated from four working days to two working days.

It is also worth noting, that the penalty for “each wrongful rejection” of porting requests has been increased to Rs. 10,000. The telecom regulator said, “In order to discourage the wrongful rejections of the porting requests and adherence to the timelines specified for the various tasks, the provisions of financial disincentives have been made.” It added, “In the changed process, it is important that wrongful rejections and providing false/wrongful information by donor operator… are to be discouraged. Therefore, in order to protect the interest of mobile subscribers, such contraventions of regulations shall be subject to scrutiny and the imposition of the financial disincentives, if applicable.”

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