Vodafone biggest MNP gainer, adds 190,000 users

Nearly a month after the nationwide rollout of Mobile Number Portability (MNP)
services, Vodafone Essar has emerged as the biggest gainer, notching up 190,000 new
subscribers, whereas state-owned BSNL lost more customers than it attracted from other
service providers.

Since the launch of MNP services, nearly 200,000 mobile subscribers have switched
service providers using the facility. MNP allows users to change service providers while
retaining their phone numbers.

“A total of 1,979,600 numbers of subscribers have ported their numbers so far using the
MNP facility,” according to official figures provided in the Rajya Sabha by the
Department of Telecom (DoT). Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had launched
nationwide MNP services on January 20 this year. It has been a month since the service
was started and as expected, older GSM operators like Vodafone Essar, Airtel and Idea
Cellular continue to lure the bulk of subscribers to their networks.

According to latest available figures, Vodafone Essar gained as many as 190,000

customers, followed by Idea Cellular, with a net gain of 150,000 subscribers. The figures
denote the difference between the number of customers porting in and porting out. The
country’s largest operator, Bharti Airtel remained at number three with a net gain of
about 148,000 subscribers till date. However, most operators stick by the theory that
MNP will not be a game-changer for the industry.

CDMA operators are facing a huge exodus of subscribers, with RCom, Tata Teleservices
and BSNL losing subscribers to old and established GSM service providers. In the case
of RCom (CDMA), as many as 134,000 subscribers ported out, while 5,717 ported in.
Similarly, TTSL (CDMA) lost over 1.04 subscribers while attracting only 8,298
subscribers to its fold. All that a customer needs to do for changing his telecom operator
is pay a maximum of Rs 19. He/she will get a new service provider within seven working
days as per the guidelines of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.

Among the new operators, Uninor and Sistema Shyam attracted more subscribers than
they lost. To combat this, these operators had lowered tariffs along with doling out
freebies.