Over 817,000 porting requests have been completed since the inception of mobile number portability in Ghana two years ago.
Ghana’s regulator, the National Communications Authority ( NCA), said in a statement marking two years of MNP that In its second year, 447,095 requests had been completed, showing an increase of 21% over the first year. From the launch date of July 7, 2011 until the end of the second year, 817,202 porting requests have been completed. The number of completed ports represents about 3% of the total active mobile subscription base of around 27 million.
The NCA said Ghana’s success with the MNP could be largely attributed to the initial advance preparations and rigorous testing and the collaboration amongst all the key stakeholders; including the NCA, Porting Access Ghana (the central MNP service provider), and the mobile network operators.
Current figures show that the net impact on each operator ranges from a positive of 5% to a negative of 2% of their respective subscriber bases, with new ports typically running between 25,000 and 50,000 per month.
The NCA noted that porting speed had increased considerably and had undoubtedly contributed to MNP’s success in Ghana.
Following agreed process performance goals between the mobile network operators and NCA, average porting times dropped from 5 hours, 21 minutes in July, 2011, to 5 minutes, 25 seconds in June, 2013. A customer can therefore be active on his new network with his old number while still present at the shop or with the agent for his new network.
