{"id":45908,"date":"2012-03-23T12:57:05","date_gmt":"2012-03-23T10:57:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=45908"},"modified":"2013-03-11T11:41:37","modified_gmt":"2013-03-11T09:41:37","slug":"mobile-number-porting-winners-and-losers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/45908-mobile-number-porting-winners-and-losers.html","title":{"rendered":"Mobile number porting: winners and losers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> and 8ta<\/a> claim they are net winners through mobile number portability (MNP) which allows consumers to move from one provider to another without losing their number.<\/p>\n

Mobile number portability was launched in September 2006, but the system was not used to the extent which some smaller operators have hoped for. Virgin Mobile<\/a> is a good example of MNP not bringing the subscribers which they hoped for in 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirgin Mobile banked on mobile number portability at its inception, but this did not pay off because South Africans are seemingly reluctant to change service providers,\u201d said Spiwe Chireka<\/a> of Frost & Sullivan<\/a>, mobile-operator analysts.<\/p>\n

This raises the question of how many subscribers have used the system, and which cellular operators are the biggest benefactors of MNP.<\/p>\n

Winners and losers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom spokesperson Richard Boorman<\/a> said that there have been around 1.2 million ports between networks over the last five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cVodacom has been a net gainer from this process \u2013 approximately 150,000 overall. On a base of approximately 60 million active SIMs in SA, the numbers are pretty modest,\u201d said Boorman.<\/p>\n

\"Amith<\/a>

Amith Maharaj<\/p><\/div>\n

Amith Maharaj<\/a>, senior managing executive at Telkom<\/a> Mobile, said that there is a fair amount of number porting taking place, but would not give numbers. \u201cActual numbers are confidential company information,\u201d said Maharaj.<\/p>\n

Maharaj did however reveal that 8ta is a net gainer through mobile number portability: \u201cPort in\/out has taken place, biased towards port-in, making 8ta the net gainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virgin Mobile’s Jonathan Newman<\/a> said that MNP is \u2018small but growing\u2019. \u201cSecondary SIM usage is still more common than primary SIM porting,\u201d said Newman.<\/p>\n

Newman said that they do not have specific numbers, but that porting related to Virgin Mobile accounts for \u201ca few thousand a month in each direction with a net positive impact\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cell C\u00a0and\u00a0MTN<\/a>\u00a0were asked for comment on MNP, and whether they gained or lost subscribers because of MNP, but these cellular providers did not provide feedback by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Number Portability: Calling Cell C<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The true MNP numbers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may be surprised about the biggest winners when it comes to mobile number portability in South Africa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[473,469,9922,35,42,1167,5320,1119,41],"class_list":["post-45908","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-8ta","tag-amith-maharaj","tag-cel-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-richard-boorman","tag-spiwe-chireka","tag-virgin-mobile","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45908"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45910,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908\/revisions\/45910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}