Mobile Number Portability (MNP) enables mobile telephone users to retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network operator to another. MNP is implemented in different flavours across the globe. The international and European best practice is for a customer wishing to port his/her number to contact the new provider (Recipient) who will then arrange necessary process with the old provider (Donor). This is also known as 'Recipient-Led' porting. The only country to not implement a Recipient-Led porting is the UK where a customer wishing to port his/her number is required to contact the Donor to obtain a Port Authorisation Code (PAC) which he/she then has to give to the Recipient. Once having received the PAC the Recipient continues the port process by contacting the Donor. This form of porting is also known as 'Donor-Led' and has been criticised by some industry analysts as being inefficient. It has also been observed that it may act as a customer deterrent as well as allowing the Donor an opportunity of 'winning-back' the customer. This might lead to distortion of competition, especially in the markets with new entrants that are yet to achieve scalability of operation. A significant technical aspect of MNP is related to the routing of calls or mobile messages (SMS, MMS) to a number once it has been ported. There are various flavours of call routing implementation across the globe but the international and European best practice is via the use of a central database (CDB) of ported numbers. Network operators generally hold local copies of CDB and query it to find out which network to send a call to. This is also known as All Call Query (ACQ) and is highly efficient and scalable. Majority of the established and upcoming MNP systems across the world are based on this ACQ/CDB method of call routing. One of the very few countries to not use ACQ/CDB is the UK where calls to a number once it has been ported are still routed via the Donor network. This is also known as 'Indirect Routing' and is highly inefficient as it is wasteful of transmission and switching capacity. Because of its Donor dependent nature, Indirect Routing also means that if the Donor network develops a fault or goes out of business, the customers who have ported out of that network will lose incoming calls to their numbers. The UK telecoms regulator Ofcom completed its extended review of the UK MNP process on 29 November 2007 and mandated that ACQ/CDB be implemented for mobile to mobile ported calls by no later than 1 September 2009, and for all other (fixed and mobile) ported calls by no later than 31 December 2012. Countries where MNP is in place also use third parties; such as TynTec Ltd, a UK based company that provides the service on a world-wide basis to various telcos, service providers and data mining organisations, to query the mobile number in order to route the voice call or message to the right network. The query is processed through a request to the Home Location Register (HLR) for each query within the SS7 network. Other such providers include NQuire, End2End, and NumberPortabilityLookup.com. In regard to providers who deliver MNP solutions into the operators network, some examples are Ericsson, Huawei and European Computer Telecoms (ECT) [1]. ECT delivered for example a pan-European Number Portability solution to Tele2. This solution, a geographically redundant Service Delivery Platform, takes care of the MNP for Tele2 in approx. 10 European countries. It takes a minimum of 5 working days to port a number in the UK compared to 2 hours only in Australia, USA and even as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland. On 17 July 2007, Ofcom released its conclusions from the review of UK MNP and mandated reduction of porting time to 2 working days with effect from 1 April 2008. On 29 November 2007, Ofcom completed its consultation on further reduction to porting time to 2 hours along with recipient led porting and mandated that near-instant (no more than 2 hours) recipient led porting be implemented by no later than 1 September 2009. In Australia, mobile telephone numbers have been portable between carriers since 2001. Previously, prefixes 04x1, 04x2 and 04x3 referred to Optus customers, 04x4, 04x5 and 04x6 referred to Vodafone numbers, 043x, referred to 3 Australia numbers, and 04x7, 04x8 and 04x9 referred to Telstra. Portability has been a great asset in allowing freedom of choice of service provider. However many telecommunications companies had special or discount rates for calls between two customers of the same service provider, which although the special rates still existed, it was made difficult for customers to determine which provider the person they were calling was with. Land line phone numbers are tied to a particular physical telephone exchange - as of 2004 there are no plans or demand to change this. Cyprus also began to offer this service when another telecommunication other than the main began offering mobile telephony. In Saudi Arabia, MNP has been implemented in the middle of 2006, helping to liberalize the market, raising the competition between ALJAWAL, and Mobily, the two Mobile Operators originally available in the country. MTC Zain, a third operator is being introduced (end of 2007) to the Saudi Market. The new operator will target to benifit the most from the availability of MNP in the country. All of this pours into the benifit of the market and the end customer, as more competition reflects into better service levels, better marketing packages, etc. The administrative approach for MNP in Saudi Arabia is managed by the Centralized Clearinghouse Approach, through the NPC (Number Portability Clearinghouse), a product of Telcordia, a worldwide leading company in NP solutions. The implementer and system integrator is Giza Arabia, a company owned by a leading system integrator in the Middle East, Giza Systems located in Cairo Egypt. Giza Arabia is also the implementer of the intra-operator MNP part of the solution for MTC Zain, the third mobile oprator in Saudi Arabia. The intra-operator is implemented using a Telcordia solution called NPG (Number Portability Gateway). In Egypt, MNP will be introduced in the beginning of 2008. The three mobile operators in Egypt (Mobinil, Vodafone, and Etisalat) are expected to compete to get the most out of MNP. Telcordia's NPC serves the centralized administrative and provisioning role of MNP, with its partner Giza Systems as the system integrator. Giza Systems has also implemented and will beoperating the intra-operator MNP part of the solution for Mobinil using Telcordia's NPG.
Pakistan introduced mobile number portability in March 2007 and was the first country in its region to do so. It was introduced on 23 March 2007 and was implemented from 26 March 2007. The Nigerian Telecommication regulatory agency (Nigeria Communications Commission, NCC) announced plans to introduce mobile number portability before the end of 2007. Israel implemented MNP on December 3, 2007. The Indian government also said yes to start number portability in the country and it is going to implement within soon.
