The communication Commission of Nigeria has announced that the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) programme which had been planned for June last year but failed will now be launched on 26th of March this year.
The NCC Director of Public Affairs Tony Ojobo, said that the launch would be flagged off by the end of this month as this would be in the same accord with the NCC’s goal of launching MNP in the first quarter of 2013.
He pointed out that MNP would enable subscribers to port from one service provider to another without losing their numbers. He explained the procedure saying that a user would go to the customer service centre of the network one wants to port to and take with them a photo ID,and fill in forms and all data will be recorded in the centre database.
According to Ojobo the move complements SIM registration exercise that was done last year. He added that the “verification of all the SIMs that have been registered would be done next month to ascertain any discrepancies arising from the registration exercise and the affected subscribers will then receive an SMS requesting them to go to a service centre to rectify the mistakes.”
Ojobo said the process of porting would take a maximum of 48 hours from the time its initiated to the to the point where the number is functional through the new service provider.