How Vodacom and MTN nearly killed porting to Cell C

The Johannesburg High Court recently ordered MTN to allow customers to keep their phone numbers when leaving the network.

Cell C said it lodged the preceding court application because of ongoing problems affecting customers attempting to port from MTN to Cell C.

“Ports were being rejected by MTN for reasons not allowed in terms of the porting regulations,” said Cell C.

Cell C said the high court application followed attempts by the company to resolve the issue with MTN.

“The application dealt with MTN’s introduction of an extra step in the porting process, making it extremely difficult for customers attempting to port to Cell C and resulting in a massive increase of rejected ports,” said Cell C.

What happened

To understand the need for Cell C’s high court application, one has to look at what happened in April 2016.

Before 18 April 2016, around 1.5% of porting requests from Vodacom to Cell C were rejected.

On 18 April, Vodacom changed the SMS messaging it uses to communicate with subscribers who want to port to another network.

Vodacom’s new message read: “Vodacom received a request to port [number] – note that you’ll lose all airtime/bundles. Reply 1 to confirm within 40 minutes.”

Vodacom also changed from an opt-out process, where the subscriber could stop the porting process, to an opt-in process with a strict time frame.

This process, said Cell C, was unlawful under the 2005 regulations which governed porting.

Failed porting requests jumped from the usual 1.5% to over 60% – a sign that Vodacom’s new system prevented most porting requests.

On 26 April, MTN followed Vodacom’s lead and changed its porting system to opt-in – with similar SMS messages.

MTN’s message read: “Alert! MTN has received a Port Out Request from this number. You will lose all airtime/bundle SMSs. To proceed reply 1 to this SMS within 30 minutes.”

The result was the same as Vodacom’s – failed porting requests increased from the usual 7.5% to over 70%.

Cell C stated that even when a subscriber selected to be ported within the time frame, the request would still be rejected in some cases.

It was clear that Vodacom and MTN’s new process prevented many of their subscribers who wanted to port to another provider from doing so.

The charts below illustrate the impact of the new porting system which Vodacom and MTN implemented.

Vodacom backs down, MTN fights on

After Cell C failed to address the issue with Vodacom and MTN, the company approached ICASA and the high court to resolve the problem.

Vodacom settled with Cell C to reinstate an opt-out system, where it uses two opt-out messages in which users are warned of the benefits which they may lose.

MTN decided to fight the matter in court, and lost.

MTN said it “intends to have the matter heard by ICASA as soon as possible so as to get to a conclusion that is to the benefit of subscribers”.

More on porting

MTN prevented customers from porting to us: Cell C

MTN must allow departing customers to keep their numbers