Vodafone Ghana on Monday said it was pushing for the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP),to empower the subscriber to decide which mobile network was best for the country.
"The claims and counter claims by network operators on which one has the best network quality will all be put to rest when MNP is implemented to give the subscriber the power to decide which network is best," Major Albert
Don-Chebe (rtd), Head of Corporate Communications of Vodafone Ghana, said.
He was speaking at a day's workshop for journalists in Accra on the proposed implementation of MNP in Ghana.
The seminar was intended to generate debate in the media on the need for the MNP system to come to Ghana.
MNP is a system that allows a customer to keep his number, including the network prefix, when changing from one network operator to another.
Unlike what Zain did when they enabled customers of other networks to register their numbers on Zain with the Zain's 026 prefixing, MNP allows a customer to move from Vodafone, for instance, with his 020XXXXXX number to Zain,still maintaining the 020 prefix.
Mr Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications, declared his commitment to MNP during his vetting in Parliament.
"With as many as six mobile operators in Ghana it has become necessary for MNP to be implemented to give customers the choice and flexibility to be on any network they want and I can assure you that I am committed to its
implementation," he told the Appointments Committee of Parliament.
He, however, noted that MNP could only happen when the regulatory and technical environment was ready for it.
The National Communications Authority said about a year ago that it was regularizing the phone numbering system before the implementation of MNP, possibly in 2011.
But in answer to a questionnaire from the Ghana News Agency, the NCA said that MNP is "cumbersome and costly" and that "the success rate of its implementation in other jurisdictions did not match the money that was sunk into the project".
The NCA explained that MNP was cumbersome and costly because of the length of time to execute porting, frequency of porting and cost of porting to customers.
Four of six mobile operators, Kasapa Telecom, Zain, Glo Mobile, and now Vodafone have openly declared their support for it, while MTN refers journalists to the NCA for comments on MNP.
Major Don-Chebe told the GNA that the NCA had not discussed any time lines for the implementation of MNP with the operators.
"Every mature telecom market in the world is implementing MNP. There is no reason why Ghana, with as many as six operators and penetration level of more than 55 per cent of the populations should not," he said.
Major Don-Chebe said the "painful obstacles" to MNP must be removed to ensure that customers were not "trapped" on a network even when the network quality is bad.
He assured the public that MNP would be a big issue in Ghana in the next few months because Vodafone would continue the debate at all levels.
Mr Mortimer Hope, Executive Head of Technical Regulation, Vodacom, South Africa, who was the resource person at the seminar, told journalists that MNP was not costly as the NCA had said it was and it would only be cumbersome depending on what regulatory environment the NCA put in place.
"I don't know which jurisdictions the NCA has been learning from but in all the jurisdictions we have studied, porting time is a matter of minutes and days, porting is at no cost to the customer, and MNP actually leads to
reduction in tariffs," he said.
Mr Hope said MNP was good on the subscriber because "you can move to a network you consider as better than the one you are on now with your
original phone number, and wouldn't have to change your business cards," he said.
He noted that the global trend was that customers wishing to port their number, contacted the network they wish to move to and that network then initiates the porting process to ensure that the customer was free from influences from the other network.
"Once a number is ported the customer loses all the benefits of the previous network and is also free from the challenges of that network but
takes on all the benefits and challenges of the new network, if any," he said.
Mr. Eric Valentine, Head of Technical Systems at Vodafone Ghana, said MNP would only benefit the GSM operators in Ghana and not the only CDMA
player, Kasapa.
He explained that GSM is not compatible with CDMA and so porting was currently not possible between GSM and CDMA.
In cellular service there are two main competing network technologies: Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA).