Mobile Number Portability (MNP) : Report card 2016 : Idea biggest gainer, RCom biggest loserIntroduced in 2011 in India, Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is a process by which both

prepaid and post-paid mobile users can retain their mobile numbers despite changing their

mobile operators or changing states across the country. They can also switch between

CDMA & GSM using MNP.

To put it simply, MNP makes it easier for the user to switch to a new operator if he/she is

unhappy with the current operator’s services.

[If you would like to know more about MNP and how to port your number, check out How

to port mobile number in 5 easy steps ]

Five years on, Kotak Institutional Equities did a study to find out how MNP has fared for

the various operators.

According to the study, Idea, Vodafone and Airtel were the biggest gainers from MNP over

the 5 years gaining 17 million, 11.1 million and 7.3 million respectively:

The top three are the only net gainers from MNP, their combined net additions at 21% of

the total gross ports of 168.6 million. Other players, combined have seen 44.7 million port-

ins and 80.1 million port-outs.

Other operators put together have lost 35.4 million net subscribers.

RCom, Aircel and Tata Teleservices are the top losers losing 10.8 million, 6 .6 million and

6.4 million subscribers to MNP.

Telenor has seen a net loss of 4.4 million, high given its market share; this is perhaps

reflective of Telenor shrinking its operations to six circles post licence cancellations in

2012. BSNL’s net loss of subscribers stood at 2.5 million.

The three CDMA players (RCom, Tata and Sistema) have seen a net subscriber loss of

8.3 million with low gross port-ins of only 2.1 million (versus 10.4 million port-outs).

These could be the high-usage voice subscribers that were stuck with CDMA in the

absence of MNP as they did not want to change their number. Sustained sharp decline in

CDMA share of voice minutes in the market corroborates this aspect.

Key inferences from the study:

• The data points suggest a high degree of porting activity within the incumbent pack

itself, i.e., customers porting from one incumbent to another

• Porting customers generally move up or laterally on the quality “curve”, which

explains the high level of porting activity strictly within the top operators

• One major reason for porting within the top telcos are gaps in their hi-speed data

network – 3G or 4G – footprint

• The nature of competition has shifted from voice to premium data subscribers and

may intensify further when Reliance Jio starts 4G services