Number porting will be affordable

Johannesburg, 29 Jun 2006

The long-awaited introduction of number portability, allowing people to change cellphone networks without having to change their phone numbers, will happen on 18 September.

This is according to Amos Hlabioa, advisor to Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) councillor Nadia Bulbulia.

Though the cost of migrating between networks is yet to be established, two senior analysts have predicted the cost will be affordable, perhaps even waived.

This is in contrast with several industry observers` comments a few weeks ago that cellular operators could inflate the costs of number porting to discourage people migrating to other networks. This, it was reported, is the practise in several European countries.

"It would have to be less than R500 to make any market sense at all," says telecoms analyst at BMI-TechKnowledge, Richard Hurst.

He adds: "I don`t think it will alter the market situation as much as some people predict - we expect churn to be about 2%."

Waiving fees

Dobek Pater, analyst at Africa Analysis, believes switching networks after September and retaining one`s number will cost "a few hundred rand".

He adds the fee could be subsidised or even waived by operators hoping to attract customers to their networks.

Another spin-off from the introduction of number porting is "operators will start implementing customer retention plans, improving the quality of service, and trying to create compelling reasons for subscribers not to leave the network," says Pater.

Contract winner

A member of the steering committee for mobile number portability, who does not wish to be named, tells ITWeb that Saab Grintek has won the contract to establish a porting centre to facilitate the service.

"However, the contract hasn`t yet been signed - that will happen within the next two weeks," he says.

The value of the contract is not as much as reported in other dailies, he notes, revealing it is worth less than R100 million.

The spokesman for the steering committee, Mike Falconer, was unavailable for comment this morning.