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Four Years of Portability in Romania
Data: 10/19/2012
Four Years of Portability in Romania
Four years after the
introduction of number portability in Romania, the amount of ported
numbers reached 873,213. This amount has risen every year: 30% of the amount of
ported numbers so far was achieved in 2011, 25% in 2010 and 21% in 2009.
The amount of ported numbers has grown steadily since
the introduction of the portability service on 21 October 2008. Thus, 15,681
numbers were ported in the last three months of 2008, 180,239 numbers were
ported in 2009, another 221,219 numbers were ported in 2010, up by 23% as
compared to 2009, and this trend was maintained in 2011, when the amount of
ported numbers grew by 18% to 260,256. In the January-October 2012 timeframe,
195,818 numbers have been ported and ANCOM estimates that this year the amount
of ported numbers will exceed the level registered last year.
“Four years after ANCOM introduced the portability
service, we may say that the more than 870,000 Romanians who decided to change
their telephony provider are the clear proof of a dynamic and competitive
market, which offers its customers the freedom to choose”, Mr. Cătălin Marinescu, the President of ANCOM, said on the occasion of
the four-year celebration of the introduction in Romania of number portability.
Out of the total 873,213 numbers ported until 15 October 2012, 586,252 are mobile telephone numbers, accounting for 67% of the
total, a share which maintained a constant course all these four years. The
statistical data show that the postpaid users are keener to port their numbers
(74%) as opposed to the prepaid users. In the mobile telephony segment, the operators
involved in the porting process share the mobile numbers ported so far as
follows: Cosmote accepted 195,349 numbers, Vodafone 194,774, Orange 189,508, RCS & RDS 5,894, and Telemobil
719. In
the 4 years from the introduction of number portability, the largest amount of
mobile telephone numbers was ported in 2011 – 177,111.
As for fixed telephony, 34 providers share between them
the 286,961 numbers ported until now.
Out of these, most numbers were ported into the networks of UPC Romania – 76,737,
RCS & RDS – 75,263, Orange
– 57,588, Vodafone – 51,823, and Romtelecom – 12,657. Most requests for the
porting of the fixed number were registered in Bucharest (84,306 numbers), followed
by Cluj county with 21,298 ported numbers, Timis (15,348), Prahova (15,235) and
Galati (13,003), which together stand for more than 50% of the total ported
fixed telephone numbers.
During the four years since the introduction of number
portability in Romania,
16,000 persons ported on average every month, whereas December is the month
registering the largest amount of ported numbers.
Starting September 2012, a ported number is
activated within one working day, as provided for by the European rules, while
the maximum duration of related administrative procedures and the maximum
possible duration of service interruption were also reduced. Thus, if in the second
half of 2012, before the entry into force of the new provisions on portability,
the average duration of service interruption was 86 minutes for fixed telephony
users and 27 minutes for mobile telephony users, in September this duration
decreased to 64, respectively 24 minutes, levels which are below the regulated
ones.
The most frequent aspects signalled by the users all
along this years by means of the 685
complaints lodged in relation to portability concerned the failure of the
providers to offer full and adequate information to their customers regarding
the porting process, as well as delayed achievement of porting as compared to the
date agreed for its completion. The most frequent reasons for which a donor
provider rejected a porting application referred to the inconsistency between
the series of the SIM card and the number for which the porting was requested,
the erroneous entry of the subscriber code or wrong installation address. It is
worth mentioning that these reasons also generated delays in the porting
process.
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Do you wish to port your number? Here are 10 tips you must know:1. Find out about all the providers’ offers and choose the one that suits your best.2. Carefully read your contract with the current provider, looking for termination clauses or for special interruption provisions.3. If you use a prepaid card, the remaining credit cannot be transferred.4. Fill in the standard porting request, which is available either here, or at one of the acceptor provider’s offices.5. Fill in the porting request carefully. If you do not provide full and accurate details, the system will reject it.6. S...
1. Can I port my telephone number within the same network?
No. Portability enables you precisely to change the network, while sticking to your telephone number. Portability allows a number to “leave” the initial network and to be used by the same user in another network.
If you do not wish to change the network, but change the contractual clauses, you need to discuss it with your service provider and negotiate the terms that suit you best.
2. If I change the network, do I keep the current “prefix” of my telephone number?
When ported, the 10-digit telephone number remains unc...
The launch of number portability has made network identification based on the number format impossible. Therefore, to avoid situations in which the users could unawares pay a different tariff than the one they know, each call to a number that used to be in the origination network of that call, but was subsequently ported, is preceded by a beep sound.
This beep sound allows the caller to end the call, find to which network the number has been ported and whether the tariff of a call to that number is different from the known one.
Some users are not aware of this sound signal that mak...
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