Number porting requests pile up as net mobile subscribers shrink

New Delhi: Dissatisfaction among users with their existing mobile operators has surely reached astronomical proportions. Why else would there be almost 1.05 crore request for number portability in Karnataka alone till February this year?

According to data released by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), almost 8.7 crore people want to port out from their existing service provider all across the country and this staggering number of porting requests were received till February this year.

Porting out means retaining the mobile number but opting for a different service provider.

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On a month-on-month basis too, this number has increased, since 2.57 million or 25.7 lakh new mobile phone subscribers got added on to this huge list of people wanting to port out in February alone against almost 8.43 crore telecom subscriber base in January.

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TRAI issued new MNP regulations in September 2012 under which penalties could be imposed upon operators for unjustified rejection of requests. But no penalties have been imposed on any telecom operator so far. So why are such a staggering number of porting requests pending?

As per the TRAI data, almost 30.9 lakh requests for porting are pending in Mumbai alone, while in Delhi this number stands at 28.4 lakh. For Kolkata, it is 19.66 lakh. The second highest number of porting requests are pending in Rajasthan (after Karnataka) at almost 82.5 lakh.

At present, porting is restricted to a telecom zone - a Delhi Airtel customer can port to Vodafone but within Delhi. The government intends to make the service national such that the Delhi Airtel customer can take a Vodafone Mumbai connection without changing his number. This move is already being resisted by operators, who say national Mobile Number Portability (MNP) may not be commercially viable as high implementation costs will outweigh demand and add to the cost pressure even as hyper-competition and mounting debt negatively impacts profits in the sector.

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A story in the Economic Times on April 16 says leading mobile phone companies on the GSM platform - Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India and Idea Cellular - have suggested that TRAI conduct a detailed cost-benefit analysis before implementing MNP at a national level, saying the demand for this service would be a fraction of India’s total subscriber base.

And as porting requests pile up, mobile subscriber base continues to shrink. Almost a million subscribers were lost within a month in February when the total, all India wireless subscriber base fell from 862.62 million to 861.66 million though in percentage terms the decline was a mere 0.11%. The TRAI statement emphasised that the decline, which began in July last year, has gradually lessened . It said the decline is primarily due to disconnection of inactive mobile subscribers by telecom operators. It also said that ARPU (Avergae Revenue Per User) has been inching up but did not provide any figures.

Overall teledensity also declined to 72.9 (73.07) month-on-month. And while companies have added new subscribers in the rural areas with a monthly growth of 1.93%, they have reported a net drop of 1.39% in subscriber base in the urban areas in February 2013.

The TRAI data showed Bharti Airtel continued its market leadership with a 21.66% market share or every fifth Indian mobile user is on the Bharti network. Vodafone India with 17.40% and Idea Cellular at 13.84% meant these two companies together account for a little less than a third of the mobile users.

Reliance Communications was neck and neck with Idea at 13.92%, while state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) held 11.68% market share till February 2013.

Idea added the maximum number of new subscribers in February at 28.9 lakh. Bharti, Voda and Reliance Communications followed at 24.28 lakh, 21.86 lakh, and 16.38 lakh, respectively. Unitech was the biggest loser in terms of subscribers at almost 83.5 lakh since it has had to shut down Mumbai operations after being unable to bag licenses and reduce its overall footprint significantly.

Videocon, Sistema Shyam Teleservices, Tata Teleservices and Aircel - all lost subscribers as they consolidated operations and gave up some circles where they were unable to win back licenses in the two auctions till now. In the wireline segment, BSNL still controls the market with a 67.82% share.