Another hurdle to decent telecoms competition and consumer choice has fallen, with the implementation of individual geographic number portability (GNP) starting in earnest on Monday.
After almost five years, fixed-line home phone users can now switch providers, while keeping their numbers. “Geographic number portability is a tool to promote consumer choice in the market,” said Independent Communications Authority of SA (ICASA) chairman Paris Mashile at a briefing this morning.
ICASA held the briefing to explain the details of GNP, which operators attending the meeting hailed as another leap towards greater competition in the South African telecoms market. “Individual customers and households are free to take their number with them, no matter which provider they chose,” said Mashile.
In January last year, nearly 300 hopeful telecoms providers were licensed to provide networks and services to customers. However, only a few of those actually applied for geographic numbers.
Those companies that have applied are now eligible to take part in the porting process. Some of them include ECN Telecoms, Internet Solutions, Neotel, Switch Telecoms, Vox Telecoms and Telfree Telecoms, among others.
Mashile said the regulator will soon publish guidelines for consumers who are keen to change providers.
Process in place
The process is being managed by the same company that centralised the mobile number portability process implemented in 2007.
Mobile porting was considered a dismal failure; however, it later picked up steam and has become a regular process within the mobile space. Despite the bad start for mobile porting, local telecoms providers feel geographic porting will be far more successful, since there is far greater choice for customers.
The Number Portability Company, of which Neotel and Telkom are to become shareholders, said everything is ready to go. “We have finalised all the system testing and the backlog of mobile porting has been completed, to clear the way for the geographic numbers,” said GM of the Number Portability Company, Clive Fagan.
He said he has already had applications from companies and others are testing to make sure that porting will be seamless both ways.
Good news for all
ECN Telecoms CEO John Holdsworth said his company is one of those testing the porting, and is hoping to be one of the first companies to take new customers off Telkom's hands. For the second time in two weeks, he has congratulated ICASA's efforts to encourage a more competitive telecoms market.
Neotel also is pleased with the work put in by the regulator. Executive head of technology Angus Hay said Neotel is pleased ICASA is finally moving on these important regulations. “It has been a lot of work, and Telkom and the regulator have really been supportive of the process,” he said.
Hay noted there are still aspects that need to be addressed, and ICASA will still need to review the numbering plan it published alongside the initial regulations governing number portability in 2005. “We would like to see changes in the plan specifically regarding the toll-free numbers,” he added.
The company is confident individual number porting will be a success, since it already has migrated 100 000 numbers from the first phase of porting, which only included big business.
Neotel's next hope is to see the local loop unbundled. ICASA's decisions regarding the local loop are expected in the not-too-distant future, since the actual deadline for Telkom to let go of its last mile is this year.
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