Virgin Mobile will be taking to the streets of Sandton in a protest march against the mobile number portability (MNP) delays, says Nicholas Maweni, spokesman for Virgin Mobile.
The march will take place at 4pm from the corner of Rivonia and Katherine Streets, in Sandton, Johannesburg, heading to the Independent Communications Authority of SA`s (ICASA`s) head office at 164 Katherine Street.
"In Virgin Mobile`s experience, MNP puts the customer in the driving seat and allows competition to thrive. Our goal with this campaign is to bring MNP to SA now," says Maweni.
The implementation of MNP has been delayed by ICASA several times, with the latest postponement seeing MNP pushed back to 10 November.
"The protest will culminate with the delivery of an open letter by Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Mobile SA founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, as well as a petition of 975 names demanding a commitment from ICASA," explains Maweni.
Pressure
Virgin Mobile says it is unclear whether this date too will be moved as a result of pressure from market players.
Speaking at the MTN editors` lunch in Sandton yesterday, MTN SA`s GM of corporate affairs Bernice Samuels said it was not true that MTN and other operators stalled the implementation of MNP.
"MTN is looking forward to its implementation, and we believe that we are going to be the main beneficiary of the process," she said.
Samuels says it would have been irresponsible of MTN to proceed with the implementation without the confidence that porting would be successful. Users could not be left stranded due to systems failure, she said.
"The 10 November date is a realistic time frame that will allow MTN the opportunity to do all the testing and simulations required to ensure successful porting.
"MTN has not conducted live testing of the MNP porting process, using real customers who could get upset if the process fails. We are still doing dummy testing where we call each other (within MTN)," she says.
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