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Why Mobile Number Portability (MNP) ?

Several mobile phonesImage via Wikipedia Malaysian have been waiting for three years, finally today is the day.

Sometime in Feb 2005, this blog invested effort to study the market saturation of mobile phone industry in Malaysia. Check out the blog entry.

So indeed, industry experts have been trying to visualize what is going to happen when the market saturates.

Observe this quote ..

For a developing country like Malaysia, some pundits believe cellular companies (celcos) may have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for the next wave of customers. Other analysts believe the celcos could rev up subscriber numbers by lowering entry barriers further.

Both of these scenarios are happening now in fact, but the industry actually has a better way of dealing with market saturation, it is a best practice being practiced around the world; Mobile Number Portability (MNP).

Yes, MNP is catered to cushion market saturation by providing more spaces for healthy competitions amongst the celcos.

This is good, really. I endorse this.

The effort will make sure that industry players do not fall into the trap of complacency. They have to be prudent with the economics of their businesses all the time and to maintain a healthy customer-relationships as always as possible.

Why ? It is not hard to guess. Look at all the monopolies around Malaysia now, how I wish there is such thing as broadband portability.

Just imagine that if someone is doing illegal throttling, all you need to do is to pay RM 25 to port over to other service providers.

And culprits can't afford to be ignorant because Switzerland can't be bought over (like Netscape), it is an open source !

MNP is a good implementation ruled by MCMC to prevent unhealthy industry practices. It must and was initiated by MCMC.

Latest Updates:

Celcom to benefit from MNP.

Celcom's net profit rose 29% to RM631 million in the first half ended June 30, 2008 from a year earlier.Strong performance was mainly attributed to higher acquisition and usage of postpaid as a result of the successful launch of the Celcom Executive Plan (CEP) and growing demand for mobile broadband services.


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Comments

Anonymous said…
I got to agree with the healthy competition part. In the past, too many new mobile users have subscribed with Hotlink or Maxis. Over the years, it looks like Maxis / Hotlink has gotten over the heads and services have dropped tremendously. On top of that, there were even more fineprints or pre-requirements just to get the reward that users deserved in the beginning.

With MNP, just a brief glance in Lowyat, many are preparing to make the switch to Digi. From the looks of it, Digi is more honest with their services and rates and at the same time, very generous with their rewards.

Maxis defintely has to buckle up if they want to retain their users.

As for Digi, it has only just begun.
Brandon Teoh said…
Thanks for comment.

DiGi is still not as good as Maxis in Klang valley. I often get interrupted moments during important business calls.