Trai proposes number porting fee at Rs 4; eighty per cent lower than the current charge

Mobile Number Portability first rolled out in India in 2010, and the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) had fixed the fee for shifting to a new operator while retaining your existing mobile number at Rs 19. Now it proposes to slash the porting fee by a further 80 per cent, capping it at just Rs 4, and has sought comments from stakeholders by December 29.

Trai's logic is that given the upsurge in the volume of porting requests since the nationwide roll-out in July 2015, and the fact that the costs of operations of the mobile number portability service providers (MNPSPs) have substantially gone down, the present ceiling of Rs 19 is quite high. In 2014-15, after pan-India MNP was allowed, the volume of porting requests reportedly stood at 3.68 crore. Compare that to the 6.36 crore porting requests made in 2016-17. 

"The Authority has, therefore, decided that the upper ceiling for per port transaction charge may be reduced," Trai said in a statement.

According to The Economic Times, the telecom regulator said that the current per port transaction charge had been determined based on estimated financial data submitted by the two MNPSPs eight odd years ago. Trai had basically computed the fee by dividing the total cost to the MNPSPs by the estimated number of porting subscribers over five years. However, when per port transaction cost was based on audited annual accounts of 2016-17, it showed a significant decline in the cost-down to Rs 4.

On whether the proposed lower cost will favour Jio, Rajan Mathews, director general of COAI, told the daily that, "To date, incumbents have been primary gainers while losers have been BSNL, MTNL, RCom, Aircel, Telenor. So far there has not been any major benefit seen as regards MNP favouring Jio."