Since the introduction of mobile number portability in Ghana three years ago, some 1.65 million subscribers have switched providers, a report by National Communications Authority (NCA) indicates.
The latest statistics from NCA show that the time to port has improved substantially, to four minutes. Tigo was the biggest gainer with 249,725 ports to its network, and Vodafone was next with 228,183 ports. MTN lost 402,244 subscribers over the three-year period, Airtel shed 58,687, Expresso saw 858 numbers leave its network, and Glo lost 16,119 customers to porting.
This being the third year since the process started, there over 838,200 completed requests were witnessed, showing an increase of 87 percent over the second year. Ghana’s success with MNP can be largely attributed to the initial advance preparations, rigorous testing and the collaboration amongst all key stakeholders, according to the regulator. The system is managed by Porting Access Ghana, a subsidiary of PortingXS.
The figures show that the net impact on each operator ranges from a positive of 6 percent to a negative of 3 percent of their respective subscriber bases, with new ports typically running between 50,000 and 85,000 per month. In June, the average porting time was four minutes, 16 seconds, and in that month, 67 percent of requests were completed in two minutes or less. Most customers who have ported said they were satisfied with their decision to do so, as 72 percent of them remain with the new operator.
