The director general of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL), Oshada Senanayake, has said that the agency has received legal approval to launch mobile number portability (MNP). In an online press conference Senanayake confirmed that MNP will break the current practice of locking customers in and is now expected to be implemented before the end of the year.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, back in April the TRCSL announced that fixed number portability (FNP) and MNP would likely be introduced from October 2021. At the time, Senanayake announced that the policy would be implemented ‘in consultation with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, due to its success in implementing number portability in Pakistan’. The official highlighted the government’s hope that number portability will lead to a significant improvement in the quality of services of voice and broadband once implemented, as it empowers consumers.
‘MNP is going to create a lot of empowerment. The consumer will now have the right to decide on the best service providers that he or she would prefer to be with. Telcos will now have to give their 100 percent on service delivery, which is good for the industry,’ Senanayake said in an earlier interview.