VietNamNet Bridge – Though the state management agencies have been making every efforts to encourage competition in the telecom market by implementing the MNP plan (mobile number portability), they said the necessary things for the plan would be ready no sooner than 2015.

The Ministry of Information and Communication once opened the MNP plan for public opinion, predicting that the MNP service would be ready from October 2014. However, it’s now obvious that the initially set up plan would be delayed.

Pham Hong Hai, Head of the Telecom Department of the Ministry of Information and Communication, said Vietnam has had necessary conditions to apply MNP.

In principle, MNP can be carried out when the country has 50 percent of its population using mobile phones. Meanwhile, the percentage of mobile phone users has exceeded the level. It is estimated Vietnam had had hundreds of millions of mobile phone subscribers, while its population has reached 80 million.

Meanwhile Tom Kershaw, Vice President of Telcordia, has noted that Vietnam still needs to reduce the density of mobile subscribers to 90-95 percent of population from the current 150 percent. By that time, Vietnam would be able to apply MNP.

Hai affirmed that mobile network operators all have agreed on the technical solution for the MNP. However, he has revealed that the mobile network operators still don’t want to carry out MNP at this moment.

Hai went on to say that all of the involved parties need to gear up and run at full capacity in order to be able to carry out MNP by 2015.

At first, it is necessary to build up investment plans, while it would be very difficult to complete the work just within one year. The data management technique system needs to be set at the telecom agency, which would also require an investment plan.

Meanwhile, mobile network operators themselves would have to implement their investment projects to form up the management systems that serve the MNP. The works are believed to be completed no sooner than 2014. After that, it would take at least six months to test the MNP system, which means that the MNP would be only officially ready by 2015 at the soonest.

Especially, Hai said it’s very likely that the MNP plan would be delayed once more.

There would be a lot of things for the Ministry of Information and Communication to do to prepare for the MNP plan. It would have to build up a policy with detailed guidance about the procedures to be followed when implementing MNP.

It would be a complicated procedure to leave from one network to another, because mobile network operators would not let their subscribers leave easily. Subscribers would have to follow a lot of different steps to ensure the benefits of mobile network operators. One of the procedures is the confirmation that subscribers do not unpaid debts to the old networks.

Meanwhile, experts have warned that the overly complicated procedures would not encourage subscribers to implement MNP. There has been no best model of MNP implementation in the world for Vietnam to learn. In other countries, the time needed for MNP is quite different, from several minutes to one month.

The solution for Vietnam is that the time for changing networks should not be too long or too short.

Also according to Hai, the success of the MNP plan would depend on two things, including the conversion rates and the time needed for conversion

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