Strong indications have emerged that subscribers would make some sacrifices before they would enjoy the benefits of the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service launched last Monday.

Nigerians on Monday witnessed the first phase launch of MNP and welcomed it with great joy and praised Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) the telecoms industry regulator and the Federal Government for the initiative, saying it has brought power and freedom of choice of networks to subscribers.

However, going by the explanations given by the Executive Vice Chairman of NCC, Dr. Eugene Juwah, subscribers should be ready to make some sacrifices.

The sacrifices, which may come as shock to most subscribers, are the willingness of subscribers to forfeit every extra airtime on their original SIM cards, forfeit data stored in the SIM cards, and be prepared to remain on the new network for 90 days after porting, without complaining, should the new network suddenly go bad before the expiration of the 90 days validity period.

Again, the subscriber must present a valid and current identity card to show proof of ownership of the line, irrespective of whether the subscriber had already registered the SIM card with full details. The subscriber will not be cleared to have ported his or her number successfully, until after 48 hours of the exercise.

According to Juwah, porting would not be automatic like SIM card registration because of the technicalities involved in the process.

“The porting exercise is free of charge, but the subscriber must remain on a particular network for at least 90 days before thinking of returning to the initial network, or before thinking of porting to another network. This is to enable both the operators and the Interconnect Clearing House that is responsible for handling data exchanges for MNP, to recoup their expenses for porting the subscriber and for retaining the subscriber on the new network. The issue of identifying the subscriber by a valid identity card is to ensure that people do not deliberately port other subscribers’ numbers,” Juwah said.

He, however, insisted that every data in a SIM card is under the custodian of the network operator that issued the SIM, adding that should a subscriber decide to dump any network, then such subscriber should be ready to also dump everything that has to do with the network.

Juwah, therefore, advised subscribers who wish to port their numbers to ensure that every airtime on the SIM card is completely used up before porting, to avoid losing airtime that had already been bought.

Explaining how porting of numbers works, Juwah said any subscriber that wants to port a number, will first indicate interest in doing so and make that interest known to the network of choice, by physically visiting the recipient network with a valid identity card. The subscriber is made to fill a form, showing full personal details, and will be instructed to send a short message ‘Port’ to a short code, 3232. Immediately this is done, the Interconnect Clearing house immediately sends a message to the original network, informing it of the plan by a subscriber to port out of its network. Once this is approved by both networks, the recipient subscriber provides a new SIM to the subscriber, and the subscriber is expected to replace the old SIM with the new SIM, to commence making calls and receiving calls.

Apart from the strain attached to MNP, that affects subscribers, Juwah also explained that with MNP, operators would lose their identity, as a subscriber could move with one SIM from one network to another.

“The issue of 0805 for Globacom, 0803 for MTN, 0809 for Etisalat and 0802 for Airtel will no longer arise as any subscriber could use one of the numbers to port to virtually every other network, provided the subscriber keeps to the rule of the game.

In technical parlance, MNP allows the subscriber to switch his number to another network of choice in search of better service quality, while still retaining the original number.