08 February 2012
Today, 8 February 2012, the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) has submitted to public consultation a draft decision which proposes the amendment of the technical and commercial conditions related to telephone number porting. The service will become active in the new network in maximum one working day, in line with the European rules, and the maximum duration of the porting-related administrative procedures is reduced from 10 to 3 working days.
The draft decision proposed by the Authority reduces the timelines in which the providers have the obligation to carry out the specific activities associated to the various stages of the porting process. A significant reduction refers to the term in which the donor provider is to answer a porting request, i.e. from 4 working days to one. This reduction will allow for the porting to be done more rapidly, including in cases where the donor provider identifies faults at the request filling in and thus the respective request needs to be submitted again.
Once the donor provider validates the porting request, the telephone number of the subscriber requesting the porting will be activated within one working day at a maximum. The potential maximum duration of service interruption in the course of the porting process was also reduced. Consequently, this will drop to 4 hours instead of 5 (in the case of the fixed telephone numbers) and 3 hours instead of 4 (in the case of the mobile telephone numbers). In practice, the duration of service interruption is approximately one hour.
At the same time, the ANCOM draft decision envisages the subscribers’ increased possibility to refuse the allocation by the acceptor provider of a temporary telephone number to be used until the porting is achieved. Where the subscribers decide to accept a temporary number, the draft decision aims at protecting the subscribers by expressly allowing the right to really choose between continuing or ending their contractual relation with the acceptor provider, in case the porting process is not duly finalised, and to be informed, accordingly, on the consequences of their choice. As well, the draft decision proposes to impose additional obligations on the providers of electronic communications services, meant to prevent abusive porting.
Moreover, the ANCOM draft decision proposes to impose the obligation of warning the end-users, by means of the distinctive tone, on the fact that they have called a ported number, in all cases when the tariff charged might exceed the tariff they would have legitimatelly expected.
The draft decision amending certain regulations in the number portability field is available for consultation here. The interested persons are invited to send their comments and suggestions, by 09.03.2012, to the ANCOM headquarters in 2 Delea Noua Street, Bucharest 3, directly to the ANCOM Registry Office or to the ANCOM regional divisions. Comments may also be sent by fax to +40 732 845 402 or by e-mail to consultare@ancom.org.ro.
Current status of the ported numbers
677,395 numbers were ported until 31 December 2011 since the portability service was introduced at end-2008. Out of these, 456,334 were mobile telephone numbers and 221,061 were fixed telephone numbers.
In 2011, an amount of 260,256 numbers was ported, increasing by 17% as compared to 2010 (with 221,219 ported numbers). Out of these, 177,111 (68%) were mobile telephone numbers and 83,145 (32%) fixed telephone numbers. 76,937 of the fixed telephone numbers were geographic numbers and 6,208 were location-independent numbers. Most geographic numbers were ported inBucharest (26,684), followed by the counties of Galati (6,670), Cluj (5,911), Prahova (4,461), Constanta (3,214), Bacau (2,518), Timis (2,212) and Alba (2,008). Furthermore, 12 freephone non-geographic numbers (in the 0800 domain) were also ported.
The average monthly amount of ported numbers rose from 7,833 in 2008 to 15,019 in 2009, 18,434 in 2010, and reached 21,688 in 2011. The largest amount of ported numbers in a month was registered in December 2011, i.e. 34,696.
As for mobile telephony, the statistical data show that postpaid users port their numbers more frequently than the prepaid users. Thus, approx. 75% of the total mobile telephony users who ported their numbers in 2011 were postpaid users and about 25% were prepaid users.
In the 3 years of portability, ANCOM received 593 complaints and intimations on malfunctions faced during this process. Most of them denounced technical problems and requested additional information on the porting procedure.
The most frequent reasons for which a donor provider rejected a porting request referred to the inconsistency between the series of the SIM cards and the numbers for which the porting was requested, the erroneous entry of the subscriber code, the inconsistency between the subscription type and the phone number, and the wrong installation address. In the majority of rejection cases, the porting request is reintroducedin the central database with the correct data, allowing for the porting to be completed.
On the same topic:
20.10.2011 – Three Years of Portability – 600,000 Numbers Kept by the Users Irrespective of the Network They Chose
19.05.2011 – More Than 500,000 Ported Numbers as of Mid-May 2011
