Mobile Number Portability Maybe By Reality By Year End

The opening of the telecommunications market in Costa Rica, specifically the cellular telephone sector, left many having to carry more than one cell phone due to the lack of Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

With Mobile number portability (MNP), mobile telephone users retain their mobile telephone numbers when changing from one mobile network operator to another.

Currently in Costa Rica if you want to change operator it will be mean having to give up your number.

Since for more than a decade the state telecom, ICE, was the only wireless service provider, many customers have had the same number for years and find it difficult to switch due to the lack of number portability.

Responsible for the allowing of portability is the government telecom regulator, the SUTEL, which says by August it will have the list of conditions for the changes and the winning bidder will then have three months to put the system in operation.

The list of conditions is expected that it will allow companies to charge their customer to recover the costs they incur in porting.

In the Americas only a small number of countries allow mobile number portability: Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, US and Panama.

In Chile MNP was implemented at the beginning of this year, while in Colombia and Paama, for instance late last year.

The time to port can be almost in minutes as in the case of the Canada and hours as in the US and Chile, it could be days, up to 12 in Mexico, for instance.