1.0 Introduction
There has been rapid growth in the penetration of telephony services in the last few years. But the growth has not been exponential in the quality of service offered or openness of business. Consumers are not satisfied with the operators' services and schemes. Traditionally, consumers are required to give up their mobile number on changing service providers. As a result, they are hugely inconvenienced by having to inform everyone about the change in their number. Besides there is likelihood of important calls (from people who didn't have the new number) being missed out, and so on.
The picture has now changed dramatically with the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP). A significant technical aspect of implementing number portability is related to the routing of calls or mobile messages (SMS,MMS) to a number once it is ported to some other network. portability benefits subscribers and increases the level of competition between service providers, rewarding service providers with the best customer service, network coverage, and service quality. Given the growth of telecom services, and enhanced competition in the mobile sector, it is pertinent to deliberate about the issue of mobile number portability at this time.
Operator portability both for fixed and mobile services, and service portability have been implemented in different parts of the world. It might be thought that number portability would have the greatest impact in maturing markets when service demand growth has eased and the market structure has become more rationalized.
August 2001 was a pivotal date in the history of Nigeria in which the first Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications call was made under a democratic government. This event heralded the dawn of a new era ” the era of GSM technology”, which has completely changed the face of doing business in Nigeria. One of the toughest decisions that can be taken by any mobile phone user in Nigeria today will be to discard a line because the user is not enjoying the best quality of service from the operator. It becomes more difficult if you have been using the line for say five to six years and it is your officially recognized line by business associates, family and friends both at home and abroad.
Changing one's cell number and services provider simply because of an inefficient service delivery from a particular service provider may not guaranty that the new services provider will be efficient in the long run. Besides, the fact that it may require to jettison a previous number with which one can be associated, comes with its own challenges particularly or business minded individuals.
But is it possible to change your service provider and still retain your number for the new service? The common cliché goes: you cannot eat your cake and have it. But this definitely is not the case with Mobile number portability (MNP). Of course, with mobile number portability, you can eat your cake and still have it, which means that you can change your service provider without changing your number.
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