Mobile number portability has not taken off in India, with only about 1.7 million users applying for change of operator in the 15 days since the program was introduced, according to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
India had about 730 million mobile connections at the end of November last year, and it was expected that a large number of subscribers would rush to take advantage of the option that allows them to change operators while retaining their mobile numbers.
New operators were hoping to attract subscribers from some of the large incumbent operators like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar.
Users may have also delayed changing operators because of an ongoing investigation into alleged irregularities over the allocation of 2G licenses and spectrum to some operators in 2008. "There is uncertainty in the market, and people may delay shifting to the new operators," said Kamlesh Bhatia, a principal research analyst at Gartner.
About 96 percent of Indian mobile subscribers are pre-paid, and many of them do not have loyalty to a particular operator, and are not concerned about changing their mobile number, Bhatia said.
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