Mobile number portability (MNP), despite its high profile launch by prime minister Manmohan Singh, may not be the game changer for most mobile operators that it was expected to be. And this comes not only from industry watchers, but from the horse’s mouth too.

“Frankly, MNP will not have a huge impact. In a couple of months, it will all be forgotten. It’s purely a customer driven exercise and one shouldn’t expect any paradigm shift,” said chief, corporate affairs strategy, Idea Cellular, Rajat Mukarji. The AV Birla Group company, ironically, was the first to launch an aggressive campaign, see­king to milk the benefits from MNP.

Echoing the viewpoint is president (marketing), Reliance Communications, Mahesh Prasad, who says it’s too early to estimate the impact of MNP, either on subscribers or revenues. “The current Industry ch­urn is about 3-5 per cent on a month on month basis depending on the operator you are looking at. The churn induced by MNP on a standalone basis may not be as significant considering the experiences in rest of the world,” he said.

MNP enables subscribers to change their telecom operator without changing their cell phone number. It was launched on an experimental basis in Haryana on November 25, 2010, with the remaining telecom circles coming under the purview of MNP from January 20, 2011. According to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai), about 140,000 subscribers have ported their numbers in Haryana so far. The regulatory body is also mulling a proposal to include porting data in its monthly report on telecom subscriber data.

Two companies, Syniv­erse Technologies and Telcordia Technologies were selected to provide the technology platform to telecom companies to enable number porting, with each company allotted 11 circles. There are 22 telecom circles in India. While Syniverse was given charge of north and west India, Telcordia was handed the circles in south and east India.

Telecom companies, already battered by a prolonged tariff war that has seen average revenues per user (ARPU) decline steadily over successive quarter, say that perce­ptions about the start of another round of tariff wars with the commen­cement of MNP are unfounded. “There have been unpr­ecedented tariff cuts over the last 18 months. We do not think that tariffs / price will alone play a significant role in customer’s decision,” said Prasad.

What MNP could result in, says country managing director, Protiviti Cons­ulting, Mritunjay Kapur, is the telecom companies sprucing up their customer care departments. He adds that most telecom companies would try and target high ARPU cust­omers, that could reflect positively on the telcos’ balance sheet.

A study paper by LIRNEasia, a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank based in Sri Lanka, says that ARPUs in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and even Sri Lanka are at an all-time low, especially amongst prepaid users, ranging between just $ 2-5. “There is very little room then for MNP to drive price competition and push tariffs that are already at rock-bottom,” said the paper, authored by Tahani Iqbal. Iqbal says that MNP implementation is a costly venture, with high recurring costs due to the technology involved.