Senegal’s industry regulator L’Autorite de Regulation des Telecoms et des Postes (ARTP) says that it now plans to launch a mobile number portability (MNP) regime in the country in February 2015 – despite previous assurances that MNP would go live in October 2014. It was June 2014 when Abou Lo, former director general of ARTP, said that the country was on course to launch MNP by October. In an interview at the time, the former ARTP official said he had signed an edict on MNP guidelines in Senegal, including the process of selecting the firm to manage the running of the single platform for it. Lo’s statement followed a similar announcement in October 2013 in which the watchdog confirmed it was conducting a public consultation on a number portability regime, to help achieve an October 2014 launch.
However, Biztechafrica quotes ARTP boss Abdou Karim Sall as saying that following a long consultation process with mobile operators, starting July 2014, to agree matters such as the terms of pricing and assessing customer experience, the testing phase of MNP will now begin this month before moving swiftly to the commercialisation phase. In other words, ARTP now has just two months to meet its latest deadline for finally introducing mobile portability in the West African nation.