For users awaiting for Mobile Number Portability(MNP) to be implemented, it’s yet again a bad news. Telecom operators want users to bear the entire cost of number portability. It was expected that it would cost somewhere around Rs. 400-500 for porting the number from one mobile operator to the other. But the amount that you might need to pay might shock you.
Since, upgrading the network to allow MNP would cost around 1200cr to the network and not more than 2% of users would avail this service, it’s going to cost a whooping amount of Rs. 6000 to the network for each user that avails this facility. Surely network is not going to pay for you, but will probably rip your wallet.
Though only those customers will be charged who take advantage of this service but I doubt how many would actually use this service, if it costs a bomb. Mostly businessmen and professionals might use this service to stick with their same number and save the portability cost of informing your contacts. But is it worth? A new sim card is available for less than Rs. 50 and sms cost is again not higher. In almost 7 out of 8 operators in India, sms cost is less than 30p. So informing your 1000 contacts just comes out to be Rs. 300.
That said, Google Voice is free and will be probably available first quarter of next year, in India. Google voice is a service by Google, wherein you can configure n-number of your phone numbers with Google and Google will provide you with just one single number. So if anyone calls you on your landline number, the call will be forwarded to your Google voice number. And you could just give your Google voice number to everyone. Now here it doesn’t matter how many numbers you change, you just got to change the new number in your Google voice profile.
So would you pay dogs and cats for just number portability(whenever it is introduced) or wait for a while for Google voice which does more than just number portability?