10 million users in India opt to change their mobile operator

According to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), 10 million mobile users have opted for Mobile Number Portability scheme since it was introduced four and a half months ago.

This system which was rolled out in January nationwide, allows users to shift to a different mobile operator without any change to their existing phone number.

A report from Economic Times, says Vodafone has been the biggest winner among other mobile operators, recording 591,600 new customers, followed by Idea Cellular which gained 590,343 customers and Bharti Airtel which had an addition of 563,460 customers.

Vodafone Essar’s strategy director Samaresh Parida stated that this growth was possible due to their better network delivery and company’s focus on consumer needs.

Among the major losers are Reliance Communications which lost over 1 million customers from its CDMA and GSM networks combined. Its GSM network experienced a loss of 672,823 customers while its CDMA network lost 413, 846 customers. Accepting this loss, Reliance Communications said it is focussed on adding high value customers rather than numbers.

Anurag Prashar, president (corporate and wireless customer service), Reliance Communications said:

In line with our MNP Strategy, we have gained high-value post-paid customers largely from the corporate and SME segments. Whereas the MNP churn has primarily resulted in porting out of low value pre-paid customers.

Analysts attributed this movement to a highly visible marketing campaign by mobile operators which led to customers ditch their existing mobile operator and join smaller ones. However they were of the opinion that this service will not be a game changer in India, inspite of TRAI’s claims that they were getting around 100,000 requests everyday.