Number Portabily Helped 154 Million Users Keep Their Numbers, Says TMG

The report, “Mobile Number Portability Around the World,” identifies the advantages and disadvantages of MNP. A primary advantage is the ability of consumers to select a new mobile service provider without inconvenience or disruption to friends, family or business contacts. For businesses, this is an especially attractive feature, eliminating the expense of updating stationery, business cards or other collateral that contain a mobile phone number. The biggest disadvantage of MNP is perceived to be the cost, which several countries have cited as the reason for not implementing MNP.

The majority of MNP implementations have been in Europe, where the European Union has mandated the introduction of MNP. Most high-income nations in other regions have also implemented MNP. Few developing nations have MNP. China and India, home to the world’s two largest mobile markets, have yet to introduce MNP. Hong Kong, where statistically, every mobile subscriber has ported their mobile telephone number at least once, has the world’s highest MNP implementation.

Top 10 countries by Mobile Number Penetration (Mobile number ports as a percentage of mobile subscribers), January 2008 Hong Kong 115% Finland 65% Norway 60% Korea (Rep) 55% Denmark 41% Spain 30% Australia 28% Sweden 25% Ireland 22% Iceland 18% Source: Telecommunications Management Group, Inc. The report features a number of statistics on MNP trends, including the total number of mobile portings by country. In addition, the report includes mobile statistics essential for analyzing MNP, including mobile subscribers, percentage of prepaid subscribers and churn rates for countries that have implemented MNP. For ordering information, see http://reports.tmgtelecom.com/mnp.