Will MNP see light of the day in Indian Telecom Scenario? The question still remains debatable as we see another round of dates change from government on implementation of MNP.
As per the original plan set out by DoT, MNP was to be implemented in two phases. Mobile users in metros and category A circles like Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra were slated to avail this provision from January 1, 2010, while the rest of the country would have had access to MNP from April 1, next year. But the government has now decided to implement it in whole of the country in one go, by April 31, 2010.
If we look into the history of MNP across the globe, lot of challenges have been faced by countries like UK, Germany, Hongkong because of inherent complications in its implementation. If we analyze, we see challenges from the cost perspective as:
- Cost involved in upgrading the network infrastructure to support number portability i.e. the set up cost
- Cost involved in maintaining the upgraded infrastructure
- Cost involved in the usage of network resources to route the calls to the ported number
The setup cost can include:
- Central Number portability Database (NPDB) setup cost
- Software development or upgrade ege. Software upgrade in MSC
- Network upgrade
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) upgrade
- Cost involved in upgrading the billing system
The maintenance cost may include:
- Cost for the agreed procedure involved in the porting process
- Activating the ported number
- Provisioning the routing information
- Informing all the service providers of the ported number
Then we see technical issues that need to be considered are the requirements for Mobile to Mobile, Fixed to Fixed and/or Fixed to Mobile or Mobile to Fixed (intermodal) connectivity. And now VOIP applications like Skype coming into picture, the situation complicates further.
1 comment:
and i was waiting for this to happen soon...sad..but yeah can undesratnd the cost complications involved....
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