According to mobile operators, the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) will become available in Ukraine towards the end of this year.
Ukrainian mobile users will be able to migrate between operators, without losing their number, nearer to the end of this year. That was informed to the UBR edition by the mobile operators.
Let us recall that the Kyiv Economic Court of Appeal unlocked MNP implementation last week, affirming the decision of the first-instance court the introduction of MNP, and acknowledging the legality of the contract between the company “SI Center” and the Ukrainian State Centre of Radio Frequencies (UCRF). According to the approved plan, the MNP implementation should be completed in early April of present year.
However, mobile providers say this scenario is unlikely.
“Operators have to obtain from the State Service of Special Communication and Information Protection of Ukraine the MNP implementation specifications, which are lacking for the time being. Then, it will be required to hold a tender for purchasing new equipment, to run tests and to fix commercial introduction deadlines. Before the final choice of engineering solution, obtaining equipment and software recommendations, it is hard to make any forecasts”, as stated by Irina Lelichenko, PR Manager at “Kyivstar”.
The Ukrainian government authorities (Ukrainian State Centre of Radio Frequencies (UCRF) and National Commission for the State Regulation of Communications and Informatization (NCCIR) still have to refine the MNP mechanism, to arrange interaction between operators and database administrator, and to test it for the system to operate correct.
“All this surely takes some time. So, the subscribers will probably have this service available at the end of the year”, as summed up by Victoria Pavlovskaya, press-officer at “Vodafone Ukraine”.
While at the same time, there remains an open question regarding the MNP price for subscribers to be charged for changing their operator. However, according to telecom operators, the fee will not be too high, since it will be collected by the concerned party, i.e. the service provider, which welcomes users come over to it.
