It is an offer to allow people to get better service while retaining their old phone numbers, but mobile number portability (MNP) seems to have left consumers frustrated rather than satisfied.
Telecom operators are struggling with issues of quality, billing continues to be tangled up, and, in some cases, negligence has led to more confusion. Many consumers say MNP requests have been rejected without any reason.
Shuvabrata Nandi, 29, a finance professional based in Mumbai, wanted to shift his postpaid Airtel number to Vodafone. "My data plan is 199 for 4GB. When I went to change operators, Airtel told me to pay an outstanding bill of 13,000 for half a month. They said discounts on plans are applied only at the end of the billing cycle," he said. Several other billing issues crop up when customers try to avail of MNP.
In December 2011, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) was looking to initiate legal proceedings against telecom operators like Airtel, Vodafone and Idea for unjustified rejection of requests. It found in its investigations that Bharti Airtel had deviated from MNP regulations in 893 cases, while Vodafone in 792 cases and Idea in 313. Reliance Communications had 307 complaints, Tata Teleservices 149 and Loop 134.
TRAI issued new MNP regulations in September 2012 under which penalties could be imposed upon operators for unjustified rejection of requests. However, in a written reply to Rajya Sabha in March 2013, minister of state for communications and IT Milind Deora said no penalties had been imposed so far.
The difficulties continue even after the transfer. Anand Seetharaman, an IT professional in Chennai, continued to get bills from both Airtel and Vodafone three months after he had shifted operators. "I was getting three calls from Airtel every day, pestering me to pay my bills when I was no longer their customer," said Seetharaman. When contacted, Vodafone representatives said Seetharaman's problem related to Airtel's billing and that they "do not have any such issue of customer porting out and billing continuing".
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