In the year 2013, the Nigerian telecommunications industry introduced the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service, a service that allows you to retain your phone number while you switch to another network provider.

This service has brought with it advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of them.

 ADVANTAGES OF MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY

• One of the obvious and paramount merits of phone number portability is the ability to retain your phone number while you can change the network provider. With this provision, you can connect with families and friends without having to change your phone number while changing to another quality and/or cheaper service.

• Businessmen and women who have been in a business for a long time and already have a phone number that customers already associate with the business will also benefit from this service more. Most likely, the first provider they chose might not currently be offering the best service and they might want to change a provider. With the Mobile number portability service, they can do this conveniently without having to change the number that people already know them with.

• On request, details about your messages and your contacts in the previous SIM can be retained and stored. As such, you don’t necessarily have to lose this information while you switch providers.

DISADVANTAGES OF MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY

• Once you port your mobile number to a different network provider, you cannot opt-out of that network within 90 days i.e. 3 full months. What this means is that even if the new provider you’re using now is not doing well, you just have to remain there for the period.

• The portability is geographical area-dependent. What that means is that if you’ve ported in a particular geographical area, when you move out of that area, then you cannot use your phone number.

• If you have an airtime balance in your account before porting to another network operator, it will wipe off as soon as the porting is completed. That means you have to leave the account empty before you can port the line.

• It has also been discovered that ported phone numbers do not receive an application to mobile text messages i.e. messages sent from the internet. What this means is that if bulk messages are sent to those numbers, they won’t get it. See here why text messages do not get delivered to ported phone numbers.

Going by these merits and demerits, Nigerians have different tastes in the mobile number portability service (MNP). While it is beneficial to many for obvious reasons, the demerits also make it a turn=off for some, not least because mobile phones now allow users to use more than one network operator at the same time.

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What do you think about the mobile number portability service? Is it doing more harm than good? Let us know what you think.