MNP in Pakistan: Business & Consumer Perspective
Mobile Number Portability service was introduced in Pakistan in March 2007. MNP facilitates the customers to switch to any service, package or operator while without changing their existing mobile number, thus providing customers with freedom of choice. MNP was part of the regulatory mandate under which mobile companies were awarded licences to operate. The MNP implementation was a large and costly undertaking.
However, according to Pakistan Mobile Number Portability Database Company Limited (PMD), so far approximately 20,000 subscribers out of 58 million have availed the facility. According to industry experts, “The incidence of switching from one cellular company to another in Pakistan has been much lower than the world average of 3 percent”.
The Unique Selling Proposition of MNP aims at increasing buyer’s bargaining power, which is viewed as a potential threat by service providers. The threat of buyer’s bargaining power is already high in Pakistan’s Telecom Market characterized by stiff competition. MNP does provide some justification from customer services and regulatory perspectives and due to this, operators will have to struggle further to minimize service switching and to retain the customers.
From service provider’s perspective MNP poses a potential threat of LOSS, especially for new entrants who are already struggling with market penetration, regulatory issues and inadequate infrastructure platform available in Pakistan.
However, very slow acceptance of MNP is providing much time to the service providers to craft their business development strategies accordingly. One of the reasons for the slow acceptance for MNP is lack of awareness. PTA so far has not been much effective to actively promote the service and it is not wise to expect the service providers to do so as “BRAND” and then the bottom line of business which is “Revenue” matters most for the market players. However, all the operators have allocated space for information regarding MNP on their websites. Further, the process to avail this service is also not very simple. From customer to recipient operator to donor operator to verification and then till activation of MNP is much time consuming. The switching cost is also there. Companies are charging Rs50 to Rs200 for MNP activation. In comparison to this it is far easier to purchase a new connection with free minutes, SMS etc in no time and informing all contacts about the new number through SMS.
From service perspective, customers have complained about the inability to receive incoming calls. Customers have also reported that PTCL callers have faced difficulty calling to their mobile numbers. The process can be slow and discouraging. In some cases it even took a month to get the MNP service activated.
PTA may have checked off another task on their “To Do” list but MNP in Pakistan cannot be described as a success so far. Only market forces will decide the long term prospects for Mobile Number Portability.
Added Oct 4, 2007: Mobile number portability: The Case For and against - LIRNEAsia
TelecomPk.Net is a leading source of information and analysis about Pakistan Telecom industry.
Loading ...
MNP is in my opinion a hoax, the operators deliberately drag their feet through this mess and in the end the subscriber gives up and walks away.
PTA has to look into this mess more seriously as I agree with you “PTA may have checked off another task on their “To Do” list but MNP in Pakistan cannot be described as a success so far” = well said
a friend had ufone with old NIC. First he had to change his UFone account to new NIC, which took 2 weeks.
now the data will take another 6 weeks to sync with SOMETHING so he can apply for his number to be transfred to Warid by Christmas.
The dominant operators do not want to make MNP easy. Probably they hope that most subscribers going for MNP will get frustrated and not switch.
Another point which Telenor CEO made was that only 1-2% of subscribers are postpaid in Pakistan and that itself means that the MNP numbers are not going to be high anyway.