The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the Draft Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Ninth Amendment) Regulations, 2023 for stakeholder comments. Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability Regulations, 2009 issued by TRAI lay down the regulatory framework for mobile number portability (MNP) in the country. To date, eight amendments to the regulations have been issued. 

As per the latest amendment, telecom operators will need to check if the MNP request if coming from a number that has undergone SIM swap or replacement in the 10 days prior to the request. If yes, the unique porting code for the request would not be generated and the operator would communicate the reason for the non-generation of the unique porting code to the subscriber through SMS. If the aforementioned clause is not applicable, the operator must check immediately on real-time basis from the database of the donor operator whether the number is a corporate mobile number; there are outstanding payments due from the postpaid subscriber by way of pending bill, issued as per the normal billing cycle but before the date of the request for unique porting code; the porting request has been made before the expiry of a period of 90 days from the date of activation of a new connection, among other details. The donor operator shall ensure that its query response mechanism provides the response on real-time basis. These details are then to be matched by the porting operator to those provided by the customer while porting into its network. If the subscriber’s demographic details match, then only further steps in MNP process may be allowed otherwise, the porting process may be terminated. 

Further, TRAI has sought stakeholder views on whether it would be appropriate to introduce an additional criterion for rejection of the request for allocation of unique porting code in respect of any mobile connection, which has undergone the process of SIM swap/replacement/upgradation.

TRAI has invited written comments from stakeholders on the draft regulations by October 25, 2023.