Francis Gelibter, the chief executive of mobile network operator Orange Armenia, has broadly welcomed the government’s progress in terms of implementing mobile number portability (MNP) in the country. Speaking in the wake of the meeting of the union of operators providing MNP services on 4 September, the official said: ‘We are very happy to announce that the implementation of MNP is progressing. We are confident that thanks to implementation of MNP, the mobile communication industry in Armenia will become even more competitive, which in its turn will contribute to improving the quality of services in the country and the customers will only benefit from it.’
The meeting was convened to announce the tender for the selection of the company that will set up and run a centralised database to handle the scheme. MNP is currently slated to go live in Armenia from January 2014, as per the terms of the regulator, the Public Services Regulatory Commission (PSRC) Decree No. 530A dated 14 December 2012. The union of operators was established on 30 July this year and comprises the nation’s three incumbent mobile operators – the other two being K-Telecom CJSC (VivaCell-MTS) and ArmenTel (Beeline).