31,000 Telephone Numbers Ported in Three Months

“While 7,000 numbers were ported, on average, per month, in the first two months since the launch of number portability in Romania, once with the extension of the ceiling of ported numbers per day, more than 15,000 new ported numbers were registered in the third month. Thus, the total number of ported numbers reached 31,514, at the beginning of February”, Liviu Nistoran, the ANC President, declared.

More than 26,000 of the ported telephone numbers are mobile numbers, whereas more than 5,000 are fixed telephone numbers.

As regards fixed telephony, compared to the last reported statistical data on number portability, the number of operators that received porting requests and ported numbers in their own network increased significantly. Thus, the 5,291 fixed telephone numbers were ported to the following operators: Atlas Telecom – 2, Dial Telecom – 243, Euroweb – 7, GTS – 73, Ines Group – 7, Iristel – 10, Media Sat – 3, New Com – 10, Orange – 103, RCS&RDS – 1,059, Romtelecom – 327, Telcor – 10, Telemobil – 66, UPC – 1,892 and Vodafone – 1,479.

As mobile telephony is concerned, following porting, all the 5 operators gained new subscribers: Cosmote – 11,707, Orange – 6,849, RCS&RDS – 128, Telemobil – 211, Vodafone – 7,328.

“The number of fixed telephony users who made use of their right to switch their provider, while keeping their telephone number, tripled during the last month and more and more fixed telephony operators are engaged in the portability process. Mobile telephony also keeps the growing trend, some of the operators doubling their subscriber basis in the first two months since the launch of number portability”, Liviu Nistoran added.

The ceiling of ported numbers per day was gradually extended, as required by the number of porting requests, therefore today each operator can port 500 numbers a day.

If a user initiates a call to a ported number, prior to completing the call, he/she will be warned by a distinctive tone that the called number was ported. Thus, he/she has the possibility to decide if he/she wishes to waive the respective call and get additional information. The users may learn such information from several sources: their telephony operator, by means of its Customer Service, or by accessing www.portabilitate.ro and using the application intended for locating the ported numbers.

Number portability enables the telephony users to keep their telephone number while changing the service provider. One can port fixed and mobile telephone numbers, Premium Rate numbers, as well as numbers in the 0800 or 0900 ranges. Porting is possible only within the same category of numbers (fixed-fixed, mobile-mobile). The service is available in Romania since 21 October 2008.