The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The first day of mobile number portability was described as “promising” by the Bahamas’ two providers, with each reporting strong customer interest.

Number portability, a process that will give the country’s 315,000-plus mobile subscribers the ability to change service providers without having to change their telephone number, launched yesterday.

The Bahamas Telecommunications Company’s (BTC) chief executive, Leon Williams, said: “Number portability is not new to the telecommunications space. About four years ago, LNP was introduced for fixed-line customers. Since then, BTC still owns the largest customer base with over 100,000 fixed line customers.

“Mobile number portability was introduced and, on day one, it has been promising. We welcomed our first mobile customer back home as soon as our store opened. Throughout the day, customers have been coming in to inquire about our upgraded post-paid plans in particular. All post-paid plans will be upgraded automatically, with up to three times more value, at no additional cost.”

Mr Williams added: “Customers are enamoured by the fact that with our top tier post-paid plan they have access to unlimited data, unlimited calls and unlimited roaming to the United States and Canada.

“We are living up to the requests or our customers, and we gladly welcome customers from other network providers back home to the bigger, better network that reaches from Grand Bahama in the north to Inagua in the south. This is BTC country.”

    Damian Blackburn, Aliv’s top executive, told Tribune Business that yesterday was a “big day” for mobile consumers.

He added that the company has seen thousands of persons pre-register to switch to the company’s network.

“It looks quite promising. We have been building a big pipeline. We have seen many persons express interest in switching to Aliv and we certainly had a very busy day today,” Mr Blackburn said.

    The Bahamas has benefitted from number portability in respect to fixed telephone numbers since December 2013. Mobile number portability was supposed to launch on February 14, 2017, but this was pushed back to March and then April.