Come December 16, mobile phone users will be able to port to a different network in 3-5 days. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has amended the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2018.
As per the amended rules, individual porting requests within a service area will now be completed in three working days, while porting from one circle to another and porting requests of corporate connections will be done in five working days.
These new rules come into effect from December 16, 2019. Telecom service providers could also face a penalty of Rs 10,000 for every wrongful rejection.
TRAI has also said that the Unique Porting Code (UPC), which is generated when the porting process is initiated, will now be generated by the Mobile Number Portability Service Provider (MNPSP). The UPC is generally generated by sending ‘PORT’ to 1900.
“This shall ensure smooth porting in new framework, thus making the porting process faster and convenient to the mobile subscribers,” TRAI said.
It has also announced that the validity of UPC as per new process will be 4 days for all circles except Jammu & Kashmir, Assam and North East, where validity of UPC will still be 30 days.
In the current MNP process, mobile subscribers can generate the UPC and submit their port request to the operator they want to port to till 17:59 pm on December 9, 2019.
However, due to the change in process, MNP will not be available for mobile subscribers from December 10-15, 2019.
“In view of the proposed migration to new process, necessary steps will be taken by the telecom service providers in creating awareness and sensitising the mobile subscribers through their websites, call centres, point of sales and their social media platforms such as Facebook page, Twitter handle etc. so that mobile subscribers intending to port their numbers do not face inconvenience,” TRAI said.