Cell users ’punished’ for switching
That means only one in every 1521 cellphone users has bothered with number portability, with close to 35 million ignoring it.
Although the figures are low, Cell C CEO Jeffrey Hedberg said the take-up should rise steadily now that technical teething troubles had been resolved.
However, problems still remained as the largest operators, Vodacom and MTN, had no incentive to let customers defect and were using delaying tactics to retain them.
Hedberg said: “If the dominant operators can stifle change it’s good for their bottom line, so there is no great incentive for our two friendly dominant operators to provide an easy porting experience. There are tactics being deployed to make it difficult for customers to port.”
Cell C had heard of cases where people applying to leave one of the dominant networks had been cut off immediately in punishment.
“If a customer wants to port they are immediately disconnected and it takes two to three days for the porting process to take place, so the customer is without a phone,” Hedberg said.
One user told Business Day she tried to port two phones from MTN and one from Vodacom to Cell C, but had been delayed for a week as the losing networks failed to hand over the necessary information. Since the MTN numbers were both prepaid, her family had to keep buying top-up airtime from MTN before the network completed the process, she said.
Of the 23000 people that Cell C believes have ported, about 40%, or 9200, had joined Cell C or Virgin Mobile, which operates over Cell C’s infrastructure. Cell C had gained slightly more than 4600 customers and lost slightly less than 3000, Hedberg said.
The numbers collated by Cell C seem at odds with those from Vodacom, which says it has handled about 20000 incoming or outgoing customers.
Since Vodacom signs up an average of 29000 new users daily, the effect is minuscule.
MTN spokesman Ravin Maharaj said the company would comment on porting only when it announced its results for the year to December.
The system was launched on November 10.
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