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Starting Today, a Telephone Number Can Be Ported in 3 Days
03.09.2012
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ANCOM’s decision amending the technical and commercial conditions related to telephone number porting entered into force on 2 September. From this date on, the ported number 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 decision 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. In this sense, the term in which the donor provider is to answer a porting request is reduced 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 filling in of the request which trigger the need to submit the respective request again.
Once the porting request validated, 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 dropped 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 service is interrupted for a shorter time, the average time interval during the first half of 2012 being of approx. 90 minutes for fixed telephone numbers and 30 minutes for mobile telephone numbers.
Where the end-user and the acceptor provider agree upon a certain porting date, the whole porting process may take longer than 3 days, taking into account specific circumstances (correlating the completion of the porting with the expiry date of the contract concluded with the donor provider, installing access infrastructure etc.). With a view to meeting these requirements, the porting management system used is a flexible one.
Furthermore, the subscribers will have the possibility to reject the acceptor provider’s assigning a temporary telephone number to be used until the porting has been completed. Where the subscribers decide to accept a temporary number, the ANCOM’s decision expressly stipulates 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, respectively, to be informed accordingly on the consequences of their choice.
As well, the decision imposes on the providers of electronic communications services additional obligations meant to prevent abusive porting.
Between 15 September and 15 November 2012, ANCOM will conduct an information campaign on the radio and on the internet, in order to boost the number of the telephony users who are aware of the existence and significance of the beep sound perceived when calling a ported number. The beep sound will be publicized on the radio, on internet banners and by means of the website www.portabilitate.ro.
Moreover, during the campaign, ANCOM will make available to the facebook.com users an application by which an user who has ported his/her number can inform his/her friends on the change of the telephony provider.
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Current status of the ported numbers
More than 800,000 numbers were ported until the beginning of August 2012, since the portability service was introduced, on 21 October 2008. The rate between the fixed and the mobile ported numbers remained relatively unchanged, i.e. 68% (550,000) were mobile telephone numbers. Up to 31 July 2012, 813,582 telephone numbers were ported, 553,154 of which were mobile telephone numbers and 260,428 – fixed telephone numbers.
In 2012, 136,187 numbers have been ported so far, 96,820 of which were mobile telephone numbers and 39,367 were fixed telephone numbers (a monthly average of 19,455 ported numbers). This year, the largest amount of ported numbers was registered in January, i.e. 27,823 numbers.
More information on number portability in Romania is available on www.portabilitate.ro.
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