The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has issued the sixth Amendment to the Telecommunication Mobile Number Portability (MNP) Regulations, 2009. The amendment will facilitate pan-India full MNP with effect from May 3, 2015. Also, TRAI has made a few changes in the regulations on porting process. As per the amendment, the donor telecom operator needs to give a notice to the postpaid customer who ports out of his service within a period of 30 days for the payment of any outstanding bills. After the lapse of 60 days from the due date of payment of outstanding bills, the donor operator will not be entitled to raise non-payment disconnection requests with the recipient operator.

If any postpaid subscriber defaults on payment to the donor operator, the latter can request the recipient operator to disconnect the ported number. In turn, the recipient operator will give a notice period of 15 days to the customer, failing which the number will be debarred for the next 15 days. In case, the subscriber still fails to make the payment within these 15 days, the number will be disconnected permanently.

Further, the time period for returning to the original service provider, under the new regulations, has been reduced to 60 days instead of 90 days.

The amendments to the MNP regulations have come after TRAI took into consideration the recommendations made by various stakeholders on MNP regulations, to the Department of Telecommunications.