{"id":8025,"date":"2012-03-20T11:03:30","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T09:03:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=8025"},"modified":"2012-11-14T16:40:06","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T14:40:06","slug":"mobile-number-porting-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/8025\/mobile-number-porting-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Mobile number porting in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> and 8ta<\/a> claim they are net winners through mobile number portability (MNP), which allows consumers to move from one provider to another without losing their number.<\/p>\n

Mobile number portability was launched in September 2006, but the system was not used to the extent that some smaller operators had hoped for. Virgin Mobile<\/a> is a good example of MNP not bringing the subscribers which they hoped for in 2006.<\/p>\n

\u201cVirgin Mobile banked on mobile number portability at its inception, but this did not pay off because South Africans are seemingly reluctant to change service providers,\u201d said Spiwe Chireka of Frost & Sullivan<\/a>, mobile-operator analysts.<\/p>\n

This raises the question of how many subscribers have used the system, and which cellular operators are the biggest benefactors of MNP.<\/p>\n

Winners and losers<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom spokesperson, Richard Boorman<\/a> said that there have been around 1.2 million ports between networks over the last five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cVodacom has been a net gainer from this process \u2013 approximately 150,000 overall. On a base of approximately 60 million active SIMs in SA, the numbers are pretty modest,\u201d said Boorman.<\/p>\n

Amith Maharaj<\/a>, senior managing executive at Telkom<\/a> Mobile, said that there is a fair amount of number porting taking place, but would not give numbers. \u201cActual numbers are confidential company information,\u201d said Maharaj.<\/p>\n

However, Maharaj did reveal that 8ta is a net gainer through mobile number portability: \u201cPort in\/out has taken place, biased towards port-in, making 8ta the net gainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Virgin Mobile’s Jonathan Newman said that MNP is \u2018small but growing\u2019. \u201cSecondary SIM usage is still more common than primary SIM porting,\u201d said Newman.<\/p>\n

Newman said that they do not have specific numbers, but that porting related to Virgin Mobile accounts for \u201ca few thousand a month in each direction with a net positive impact\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cell C<\/a> and MTN<\/a> were asked for comment on MNP, and whether they gained or lost subscribers because of MNP, but these cellular providers did not provide feedback by the time of publication.<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

Number Portability: Calling Cell C<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The true MNP numbers<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You may be surprised to find out who the biggest winners are when it comes to mobile number portability in South Africa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[407,409,2009,26,28,1755,445,77,27],"class_list":["post-8025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-8ta","tag-amith-maharaj","tag-cel-c","tag-headline","tag-mtn","tag-richard-boorman","tag-spiwe-chireka","tag-virgin-mobile","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8025"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26541,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8025\/revisions\/26541"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}