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More than 1.2 Million Numbers Ported in Romania
10.02.2014
Until end-2013, 1,207,425 numbers were ported in Romania, i.e. 824,153 mobile telephone numbers and 383,272 fixed telephone numbers. 2013 was the year with the largest amount of ported numbers – 274,137. This means that – on average – 22,844 numbers changed their network each month, but not their user. Since the launch of this service, the most numerous - 35,532 numbers – were ported in December 2013.
Number portability offers full freedom of choice to telephony users, as it enables them to keep their telephone number while changing the telephony provider.
Since the launch of this service in Romania, on 21 October 2008, more and more Romanians switched operators, while keeping their number: in 2008 there were 15,681 ported numbers, in 2009 – 180,239, in 2010 – 221,219, in 2011 they kept the upward trend, to 260,256, in 2012 there were 255,893, while 2013 was a peak in the trend of ported numbers, up to 274,137.
Out of the total of 1,207,425 numbers ported by 31 December 2013, 824,153 - i.e. 68% - are mobile telephone numbers. The statistical data reveal that subscription users are the most interested (approximately 80% of the total) in keeping their telephone number, whereas 20% of those who chose to change their provider use prepaid cards. In the mobile telephony segment, Vodafone is again the network to which the most numbers were ported, i.e. 288,424, followed by Orange, with 270,652 numbers, Cosmote, with 254,646 numbers, RCS & RDS, with 8,299 numbers and Romtelecom, with 1,400 mobile telephone numbers.
In the case of fixed telephony, 35 providers received the 383,272 numbers ported so far. Most of these were ported to RCS & RDS – 106,552, UPC Romania – 94,541, Orange – 75,163, Vodafone – 71,116 and Romtelecom – 15,666. The largest number of porting requests for fixed telephone numbers was registered in Bucharest (118,105 numbers), followed by the county of Cluj – 26,052 ported numbers, Timis (21,761), Prahova (18,687) and Galati (15,217), i.e. more than 50% of the total amount of fixed telephony numbers ported.
The year 2013 featured both the highest monthly average amount of ported numbers – 22,844, and the month with the highest amount of ported numbers – 35,532, i.e. December 2013. Throughout the five years of number portability, in Romania there were on average 15,020 ported numbers per month in 2009, 18,435 in 2010, 21,688 in 2011, 21,324 in 2012 and 22,844 in 2013.
The internet users may visit for informationwww.portabilitate.ro, where they can find the network of any telephony number used in Romania, ported or not. The website offers details on the steps to be taken in order to port a telephone number, answers to frequently asked questions in case of porting a number, as well as advice for preventing possible problems in the porting process. The advice is provided based on the factual situations encountered by the users and submitted to ANCOM. This year, ANCOM received 95 complaints from the users regarding the porting process, the main problems submitted being related to technical aspects occurred during the porting process and to the porting deadlines.
