At the end of the third year of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana, a total of 1,655,404 have ported their numbers successfully and that is more than the customers of Glo and Expresso put together.
The latest mobile cellular subscriber base report for June 2014 shows that Expresso has 127,505 subscribers and Glo has 1,371,341 customers. Together the two telcos have a total of 1,498,846, which is 156,558 less than the number of ported numbers so far.
Expresso’s market share is currently about 0.44% while that of Glo is 4.7%. But the MNP third year report indicate that the number of people who have ported so far represent 6% of mobile phone lines in the country.
The two reports also show that while Glo and Expresso’s keep losing subscribers, the MNP numbers keep rising.
Glo lost some 2,922 subscribers at the last count, while Expresso lost 15,874 subscribers same period. But the MNP platform recorded between 50,000 and 85,000 ports per month.
In the third year alone, the MNP platform record 838,202 successful ports, which is 87% more than the number of ports at the end of year two.
Tigo wins big, MTN lost big
Meanwhile, in all Tigo is the biggest net winner on the MNP platform, while, market leader MTN is the biggest loser.
The report showed after balancing out how many people ported from and to each network, Tigo gained 249.725 ported numbers, followed by Vodafone with 228,183 gain.
But the remaining four telcos were net losers; MTN lost 402,244 to MNP, Airtel lost 58,687, Glo lost 16,119, while Expresso lost some 858 subscribers to MNP.
In percentage terms, Tigo gained 6.2% more, Vodafone gained 3.4%, Expresso lost 0.6%, Glo lost 1.2%, Airtel lost 1.7% and MTN lost 3%.
Meanwhile on the second quarter market share report, MTN’s subscription increased by 134,612 to 13,438,770, Airtel also gained 65,424 new subscribers bringing their subscription to 3,570,282.
Bu the biggest MNP gainer, Tigo lost 7,991 subscribers to reach 4,034,563, and Vodafone also lost 54,414 subscribers to reach 6,678,141 subscriptions end of June 2014.
Remarkable porting speed
The report also showed that porting speed keeps rising as turnaround time keeps falling as measured against international benchmarks.
“In June, 2014, the average porting time was 4 minutes, 16 seconds, and in that month, 67% of requests were completed in 2 minutes or less. This means porting can be fully completed and demonstrated functioning before the customer even departs from the agent or shop of his/her new network,” it said.
It showed that 72% of people who ported were satisfied and therefore remain ported, saying that “this represents a much higher rate of loyalty than generally prevails in the market.”
Meanwhile, the milestone of one million successful ports was achieved on October 12, 2013, and was celebrated by three of the mobile networks each giving one of their customers who ported at that time 1,000 Ghana Cedi credit per month for one year.
Porting Access Ghana Limited, operator of the central porting system, also gave each of the lucky winners a smartphone on which they could use their newly-ported numbers.
The National Communications Authority (NCA), in a statement noted that the success chalked by MNP in Ghana far exceeds any other implementation of MNP in sub-Saharan Africa, as some countries boast of less than 3% MNP.
“Even after MNP launch in other African countries, Ghana remains the unchallenged leader in MNP performance in Africa and ranks among the best implementations in the world,” it said.
The regulator said “Ghana’s success with MNP can be largely attributed to the initial advance preparations and rigorous testing and the collaboration amongst all the key stakeholders; NCA Porting Access Ghana (the central MNP service provider), and the mobile network operators.”
The NCA is of the opinion that MNP has achieved its purpose as it has removed obstacles for any mobile telephony customer who wished to change networks but was reluctant to do so due to the inconvenience of changing his/her number.
source : myjoyonline.com
