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| Number portability gets green light |
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| BY DAMARIA SENNE, ITWEB SENIOR JOURNALIST |
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[Johannesburg, 5 October 2005] -
The long-awaited regulations regarding number portability have been promulgated and published in the Government Gazette. Communications minister Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri approved the regulations in terms of section 96 of the Telecommunications Act.The regulations provide for all network operators that terminate calls to subscribers identified by geographical numbers (landline operators) to provide for number portability within a geographical area, as well as portability to another network.They also stipulate that Telkom and all other operators should co-operate to provide such portability as soon as possible. The implementation of such portability will be governed by functional specifications that will be outlined in the Government Gazette.The regulations also state that mobile network operators must provide number portability not later than nine months after the promulgation of the regulation. The implementation of such portability is also to be governed by mobile functional specifications provided by way of government notice.‘Good for competition'BMI-TechKnowledge director Brian Neilson says number portability is a key competition enabler in any market and will increasing churn.He says as a generalisation, the smallest or youngest operator, Cell C, may have more to gain from such increased churn.Neilson says the second national operator (SNO) will also benefit greatly from number portability once it enters the market. He says although the SNO can enter the market without this in place, it would ideally hope for number portability to be implemented in the fixed-line market shortly thereafter.Customer retentionAccording to corporate communications Lulu Letlape, Telkom has agreed with the number portability proposal, as it is a practical approach.“We do not need to like number portability, but it is a statutory obligation, and the Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) and the industry have done a reasonable job of the rules to implement it,” she says.Letlape acknowledges that number portability is meant to impact on an operator's ability to retain its customers.Cell C delightedAccording to Cell C's regulatory support manager Mike Falconer, the regulations provide for a fairly simple porting process. This means people will be more inclined to port to other networks, whereas they would not do so if the process was onerous.He also notes that access to portability does not create the desire to leave the network. Service level is the key issue that will determine whether people would choose to port or not. This will make service providers more competitive, he says.Falconer says Cell C has been planning for the implementation of number portability, as all stakeholders had the draft regulations for some time.Protecting consumersOne of the key clauses is that recipient operators whose subscribers have ported their numbers from another operator shall maintain and make publicly available a list of ported numbers. This should be done through a third-party or via the Internet, the regulations state.Falconer says consumers should not be concerned that unscrupulous marketers could harvest their numbers, as the mobile operators will create a central reference company that will hold all ported numbers. This independent body will facilitate the porting of numbers and store it much as a bank vault would. There will be strong service level agreements in place to ensure the information is not made freely available.The way forwardFalconer says the most important issue that will make portability painless for the network operators and the consumer is if the operators continue to work together as they did when drafting the regulations with the steering committee.Letlape agrees. She says co-operation among operators is a keystone of number portability. This is why ICASA consulted broadly on the development of the framework regulations and promoted the establishment of an industry task group to develop the functional specifications for mobile number portability, which is a key element in implementing number portability.Letlape says while the functional specifications for mobile operators have already been drafted, ICASA has not yet started consulting on those for fixed number portability because, among other reasons, there is not yet a licensed SNO to officially participate and commit to it.Related stories:
MTN allows service provider migration
Portability on the move in new PC era
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