Mobile number portability (MNP) service is now live in Nigeria, after a public launch of the service in Lagos last Monday at an event powered by telecoms regulator, the Nigerian Communications Commission.
Again, by way of reminder, MNP is a service that allows a subscriber to move away from a network and still retains his/her number. The process is called porting. If you are currently on Network A, and you want to move to Network B, technically you are porting out of Network A and porting in with Network B. Don't forget that hitherto, networks are easily recognizable by their National Destination Codes, which prefixes the network's number plan.
So, we all know that 0802, 0803, 0804, 0805, and 0809 are Airtel, MTN, Mtel (an obituary?), Glo, and Etisalat respectively. In the new scheme of things, it will no longer be that easy to identify a network with the prefixes as, for instance, a subscriber on 0804 can decide to move to 0809.
If Mtel (defunct NITEL's GSM unit) were in business, a subscriber with number 080423148780 can move to Airtel or Etisalat or MTN or Glo with this number, and it would still ring, but it can be seen that there is no unity between 0804 and the others on that network. So in future, a mosaic of numbers will be on the networks as subscribers port in and port out.
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