Ghana’s telecom regulator, National Communication Authority (NCA) has received overwhelming commendations from local and international experts for effectively implementing the country’s Mobile Number Portability, which has been described as the best so far in the world.
Ghana saw a successful implementation of MNP, a process which allows mobile phone users to change networks without changing their original numbers on July 7, 2011, just 16 months after initiating the process in February 2010.
The experts some with specialty on MNP across the world, said Ghana was one of the few countries worldwide that had implemented MNP successfully within its set time with the latest technology – making the process very fast, consumer friendly and convenient.
James Wild, an International Consultant on the MNP, said at a day’s stakeholder seminar on the system in Accra on Friday that: “Ghana should be proud of what it has achieved – One of the few countries in the world to have implemented MNP successfully with no difficulty.
“Ghana’s porting process is simple and reliable,” he added and indicated that whereas in Ghana it took just 24 hours and in most cases less time to port, in UK, which implemented the process in 1999, it was nowhere near the 24-hour duration.
In order for Ghana to sustain this feat, Wild said it was prudent that the NCA continued to track the developments in Kenya’s MNP process because the same clearing house company, Porting Access, is managing Ghana’s process. Kenya suffered implementation difficulties and today the leading operator, Safaricom has sued Porting Access.
In Ghana, Porting Access Ghana (PXS) is coordinating the process on behalf of the NCA using a centralised data management system.
Explaining further the rationale for Ghana’s success story, Saqib Nazir, Chief Executive Officer of the PXS Ghana it was because the regulator NCA was at the centre and spearheaded the process with full backing from the Communication Ministry.
Secondly, he said, the tremendous cooperation received from the mobile operators which were involved right from the beginning helped so much.
The NCA Director in charge of Regulatory Administration, Joshua Peprah said the MNP success story could not be better told without recognizing the critical role played the Communication Minister, Haruna Iddrisu, who stood on his ground to push for its implementation despite initial challenges.
He said one month after its implementation, the NCA recorded about 30,000 mobile phone subscribers, who successfully moved from one mobile service provider to another whilst retaining their mobile numbers.
NCA’s analysis of the data shows that 10% were completed in 15 minutes or less; 23% were completed between 15 minutes and 1 hour; 34% were completed between 1 and 4 hours; 31% were completed between 4 and 24 hours; 2% were completed in more than 24 hours. The fastest port recorded so far in Ghana took place in a mere 1 minute, 10 seconds. The average port took place in 5 hours, 21 minutes from start to finish.
Mr Peprah said the NCA had given the operators 90 days after which the sanctions for violating the porting rules would be applied. He added that the Authority would continue to be transparent, fair and firm in applying the rules.
The Advanced Information Technology Institute (AITI) in collaboration with the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT organised the seminar which was attended by participants drawn from the public sector, ICT sector, civil society and the media.
Source: GNA