Mobile number portability ON in Kenya

Come April 1, 2011 Kenyan mobile subscribers will start changing their mobile phone service providers without having to surrender their numbers as early as next year at a charge of Ksh. 200 (USD $ 2.35).

Telecoms market regulator, the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), initiated the process in 2010 through newspaper advertisements asking the public to submit their views on the number portability service.

Though CCK had given the mobile phone service providers a deadline of December 31, 2010, this passed as they failed to start implementing the service. CCK had identified number portability as one of the necessary interventions required to further enhance a competitive environment. Benchmark studies carried out by CCK indicates that Service Provider Number Portability (SPNP) offers effective intervention in markets that are dominated by single players.

In Africa, number portability has been implemented by three countries so far: South Africa in 2006, Nigeria in 2007 and Egypt in 2008. The process of switching will not be automatic for first users—it will take a maximum of three days from the time of request for the service to be able to use the feature.   Compare with other countries already on number portability, prior to March 2008 it took a minimum of 5 working days to port a number in the UK compared to 2 hours only in USA, as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland, 3 minutes in Australia and even a matter of seconds in New Zealand. By end of 2009, UK had reduced the period to not more than 2 hours through the  recipient led porting  implemented on 1 September 2009.

Airtel Kenya has taken to aggressive advertising of the number portability and is hoping to persuade more subscribers, especially from Safaricom migrate to Airtel due to its low cost calls and service support. However, it seems that mobile money transfer services such as MPESA are excluded from the portability service, ensuring that Safaricom retains its army of 18 million users, ensuring that its major revenue line is still intact.

Time will tell us if the recent price wars will bring rewards to the telecoms that have been viciously involved in the fight to attract new subscribers.