The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Regulators have slammed the Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) proposal that two days initially be allowed for the transfer of mobile subscribers, and their existing numbers, to a rival carrier as an “unacceptable barrier” for consumers.

The Utilities Regulation and Competition Authority (URCA), unveiling the results of its mobile number portability consultation, revealed that the incumbent monopoly operator had sought a timeline 24 times’ greater than what was being proposed.

URCA wants the transfer of mobile subscribers, and their existing number, to the mobile operator of their choice to be completed within “two working hours” of the request being submitted - something it is sticking to after rejecting BTC’s arguments.

BTC had attempted to argue that the two-hour timeframe was “unrealistic’, given the Bahamian mobile market’s lack of familiarity with number portability, and would result in all carriers incurring fines for failing to meet it.

“BTC compared the two-hour porting timeframe stipulated in the Local Number Portability (LNP) business rules to those in some stated other jurisdictions, ranging from five days to two days,” URCA said of BTC’s response.

“BTC recommends that a gradual reduction in porting speed is a practical and fair approach and, more particularly, suggests that at the outset a two-day limit be set with a gradual decrease to six hours after one year of implementation of LNP.”

This was swiftly rejected by URCA, which said: “URCA does not agree that the two-hour timeframe is unrealistic, and considers it to be entirely reasonable, provided that all licensees adopt an appropriately committed approach to mobile number portability.

“URCA further considers that a longer timeframe would unnecessarily and inappropriately disadvantage and inconvenience customers.

“URCA stresses that mobile customers are accustomed to, and entitled to, a service within a very short timeframe and considers there to be no justifiable reason why mobile number portability should result in a less satisfactory customer experience by making the customer wait days to port their number. URCA considers that this would represent an unnecessary and unacceptable barrier to switching.”

The URCA results statement noted that the two-hour porting timeframe was, not surprisingly, backed by Aliv, the new mobile operator, which has ended BTC’s long-standing monopoly and is eager to bit into the latter’s dominant market share.

A one-day timeframe had initially been discussed by URCA and the mobile communications industry, and Aliv urged the regulator “to review the turnaround time to determine whether it can be shortened, once the new process has become familiar to operators”.

URCA added that the systems being used by BTC and Aliv would enable subscriber porting to take less than two hours, saying that experience with similar technology in Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago showed “sub-20 minute times are consistently achievable” if requests are acted upon by the customer’s existing operator “within one minute or less”.