BHUBANESWAR: The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has released the draft for Mobile Number Portability (MNP) recommendations that aims to reduce the time for processing porting requests within a circle from four days to two days. However, for inter-circle MNP requests, the current timeline of four working days for clearance by Donor Operators will continue.
“In order to discourage the wrongful rejections of porting requests and adherence to timelines specified for various tasks, the provisions of financial disincentives have been made,” the regulator said.
In the draft guidelines on MNP, the regulator has proposed two sets of disincentives in case telecom companies delay the porting process. If the companies do not share customer details with the MNP service provider within 24 hours of a customer submitting a porting request, they will be fined Rs 5,000. The penalty will be Rs 10,000 if the companies wrongfully reject porting requests.
Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India, however, said that penalties are extremely blunt instruments to ensure compliance.