Mobile Number Portability

…Over 1.65 million mobile lines ported since 2011

By: Fred Yaw Sarpong (Daily Express)

A total number of 1,655,404 mobile lines have successfully been ported since the introduction of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) system in 2011, the National Communications Authority (NCA), has revealed.

According to the NCA in its 2014 MNP Third Year Report, by the end of the third year of operation of the system, a total of 838,202 porting requests representing an 87% increment from the previous year had been successfully completed.

The Mobile Number Portability (MNP) system was introduced to allow subscribers switch networks without changing or losing any part of their default mobile numbers.

“The cumulative total number of requests completed since launch in 2011 was 1,655,404, which represents approximately 6% of the total active mobile numbers in the market,” said the report released by the MNP central system operator, Porting Access Ghana Limited, a subsidiary of National Communications Authority (NCA).

“Statistics indicate that most customers who ported were satisfied with their decision. 72% of the numbers which were ported during the first three years remain ported,” said the NCA, concluding the “users of MNP therefore appear to be more loyal than average.”

Per the report, the MNP in Ghana is remarkably more successful than efforts in the three other sub-Saharan Africa countries with MNP, which recorded annual porting rates of 0.5%, 0.07%, and 0.004%, as against Ghana’s annual porting rate of 1.6% in its first year, and 2.9% in its third year.

It continues that the overall success rate of requests submitted in the third year of porting was 81.0%, marginally down from 81.7% in the second year. The monthly success rate varied from a low of 75.2% to a high of 84.7%.

The Authority notes that; the speed of processing porting requests has also increased significantly. In June 2014, the average time to complete the porting process after request submission was 4 minutes, 16 seconds. 91% were completed in 5 minutes or less and 67% were completed in 2 minutes or less.

Meanwhile, the blocked port rate has remained fairly constant at 5.4% for the year monthly low of 4.5% and high of 6.4%. Blocking is the term denoting requests to which the donor network does not agree, and for each such request they must indicate which of the few permitted reasons applies. There is no indication that blocking is deliberately used by donor networks to prevent porting.

Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN), Vodafone, Tigo, Airtel, Glo and Expresso are all active in this porting process, together with customers porting in and out of every network.

The new porting flow for each network through June 30, 2014, along with the impact on each operator’s subscriber base shows the networks perform. Apart from Tigo and Vodafone, which recorded some gains, all the other networks recorded loss.

Airtel loss 58,687 lines, representing negative 1.7%; Expresso loss 858, representing -0.6%; Glo loss 16,119, representing -1.2%; MTN loss 402,244, representing -3.0%; Tigo gain 249,725, representing 6.2%; and Vodafone also gain 228,183, representing 3.4%.