Today, Monday, February 5, 2007, ANRCTI submitted to public consultation a draft decision on the technical and commercial terms for the implementation of number portability.
Within 9 months after the adoption of these terms by the President of ANRCTI, the providers of publicly available telephone services have the obligation to make available to their subscribers, upon request, the portability of geographic or non-geographic numbers.
“Subscribers’ possibility to keep their number while changing the telephony provider ensures them a greater freedom of choice, since they must no longer announce all their relatives, friends or business partners about changing the telephone number. The implementation of number portability will give a new impulse to the competition on the Romanian electronic communications market that currently has over 19 million users of fixed and mobile telephony”, Dan Georgescu, the President of ANRCTI, declared today.
The technical and commercial terms for the implementation of number portability were elaborated by a working group attended by representatives of ANRCTI as well as by specialists appointed by the providers of publicly available telephone services who, at the same time, are holders of licenses for the use of numbering resources and who allotted to their subscribers numbers falling within the portable category.
Number porting shall be carried out only upon subscriber’s request, at the time when the subscriber intends to give up the services of a publicly available telephone services provider (a “donor” provider) and wishes to conclude a contract with another provider (an “acceptor” provider). The acceptor provider bears the entire responsibility as regards the accomplishment of the porting process, since the acceptor provider initiates this process upon receiving a porting request from the end-user – the draft decision also provides a standard form of such a request. The deadline for finalising the porting process may not exceed 10 working days, except for certain cases.
The draft decision emphasises the implications the implementation of number portability may have over the electronic communications services providers, as well as over the subscriber porting his/her number.
Thus, the services providers shall implement new call routing mechanisms, based upon technical routing numbers. In accordance with the draft decision, in order to ensure services’ interoperability, the providers must establish the routing configurations and modify the interconnection agreements, accordingly.
When choosing the acceptor provider, the end-user must be informed as regards several issues related to the number porting: whether the acceptor provider charges porting tariffs or not, whether certain changes of equipments in user’s location are necessary, whether the additional services are affected or not.
In view of accurately informing the end-users with respect to number portability, the telephone companies have the obligation to make available detailed, clear and updated information about the portability service, including information related to tariffs charged for this service and for the calls made to ported numbers. Thus, the providers shall make available information in two ways: by means of the directory service dedicated to number portability, by means of a free-of-charge customer service, as well as by posting on the own Internet website.
The draft decision of the president of ANRCTI on approving the technical and commercial terms of the implementation of number portability is available for consultation on the ANRCTI website. All interested persons are invited to send their comments and suggestions by March 7, 2007, by mail, to the ANRCTI headquarters (14 Libertatii Blvd., sector 5, Bucharest) or directly to the ANRCTI registration office or to the closest territorial office of ANRCTI. Comments may be sent also by fax to +40 21 307 54 02 or by e-mail to consultare@anrcti.ro.