TRAI to review per-port transaction charge amid decline in port requests

New Delhi: Amid market consolidation and a fall in porting requests, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is looking to review per-port transaction charge and related ancillary services' charge for mobile number portability (MNP).  In October last year, the MNP requests dropped 37 percent to 3.19 million from 5.04 million requests in September, according to TRAI data.

TRAI said: "Mergers of some of the major telecom service providers (TSP) and closure of services by many TSPs have been witnessed during the last one year. Porting data for the last year shows that the number of port requests per month is declining."

Per-port transaction charge down to Rs 4

India's telecom regulator had slashed the per port transaction fee from Rs 19 to Rs 4 on January 31, the consultation paper said, adding that the ceiling of charges from subscriber was also down to Rs 4 for each porting.

The per-port transaction charges were initially calculated as per estimated data shared by the MNP service providers (MNPSP) in 2009, the authority said. "Subsequently, the charge was reviewed based on the financial and non-financial data of both the MNPSPs as available for FY 2011-17. The telecom regulator asked the stakeholders if the charges for per-port transaction should continue to be calculated the same way.

In a list of six questions, the authority also asked, "While calculating 'per-port transaction charge,' whether the total number of MNP requests received by MNPSP or successfully ported numbers be considered?"