MNP Publicly Launched in Iran
With the official launch of MNP (Mobile Number Portability) Iranians can now change their carriers based on their needs, and carriers should work hard to keep their customers and even attracting new ones.
Mobile Number Portability is not a new service in the world. It basically enables subscribers to change their carrier while keeping their number. It has been done in many countries since 1997 in Singapore and then in European countries and now in 2016 in Iran. After a month of the beta phase, MNP is now publicly launched and any subscriber can use this service to change his/her carrier.
If you are a businessman you should use MCI’s SIM Cards, if you are a tech-savvy you should use Irancell’s SIM Cards and if you live in Tehran and you want a stable reception and acceptable data speed you can use Rightel’s SIM Cards. For many years these carriers had their own unique SIM Card numbers meaning that you couldn’t possibly have an MCI number and use Irancell services but now with the official launch of MNP plan, you can easily do it. “By implementing this plan, the competition between the carriers would increase and they have to provide better services to their customers to keep them on their network. This plan would return the power to the users and they can enjoy a better service,” said Ali Asghar Amidian the head of Communications Regulatory Authority of Iran. Currently, Rightel is attracting most of the users to its network, something that even we couldn’t predict.
MNP has started its beta phase nearly 40 days ago. “In the beta phase, the carriers and the government tried to find out the obstacles that might cause trouble for this project otherwise MNP could have failed,” said Sadegh Abbasi Shahkooh, Deputy of Communications Regulatory Authority of Iran. Inactive SIM Cards, unpaid bills and failure to authenticate were some of the reasons that costumers couldn’t change their carrier. According to the Regulatory Authority of Iran, in the beta phase, 11 thousand users requested to change their carrier while retaining their old number via MNP plan. From that 11K requests, only 3.5K were accepted because of technical and other problems that were mentioned. Hopefully, with the official launch of the MNP, these problems will be solved and users can change carriers more easily.