In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Milind Deora, minister of state for communications and IT has said that that no operator has been penalised for turning down mobile number portability (MNP) requests from customers.
This is despite the fact that in several instances, operators have been found violating MNP norms. On September 19, 2012, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) issued the Telecommunications Mobile Number Portability (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2012. As part of the same, financial disincentives can be imposed upon operators for unjustified rejection of porting requests.
These regulations came into force 60 days from the date of publication in the official gazette. These regulations were issued following subscribers’ complaints that their porting requests were rejected by the donor operators on various grounds.
Deora added that the regulator has not imposed any penalty on the operators either. According to him, in several cases the rejection of porting requests was not in accordance with the regulation. However, under the Telecommunications Mobile Number Portability regulations, 2009, a service provider acting as the donor operator can reject porting requests on certain grounds.
Further, as per the data available, between November 2010 and February 25, 2013 complaints were made against Bharti Airtel (37,16,966), Vodafone (27,63,957), Idea/Spice (21,05,882), Tata TeleServices Limited (GSM) (8,74,468), Aircel (8,21,917), Reliance Communication Limited (GSM) (8,00,567) among others.
