The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), a group representing the country’s GSM operators, has complained to the Indian government that recent changes to India’s new Mobile Number Portability (MNP) regulations leave the system open to misuse from operators with both GSM and CDMA networks. According to India’s Economic Times, a rule change means that if a subscriber moves from CDMA to GSM (or vice versa) network technology but remains with the same operator, then the process is not required to be routed through the neutral, centralised agency responsible for processing India’s MNP. In a communication to India’s Department of Telecom, the COAI warned that this situation means “MNP could become a tool for an operator to manipulate its own subscribers. Manipulation of subscribers could enable the service provider to misuse the system to grab additional spectrum, manipulate revenue streams for different technologies to evade spectrum usage charges creating [a] non-level playing field and anti-competitive concerns amongst all other operators in the industry.”

Internal number portability is understood to benefit large mobile operators that offer both GSM and CDMA services, most notably Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices and the state-owned operators, BSNL and MTNL. According to Economic Times, the COAI alleges that the changes in policy were aimed at aiding one specific – but unnamed – CDMA operator. Under India’s original MNP plans, the centralised agency – known as the MNP Clearing House Administrator (MCHA) – is managed by a neutral operator or third party and will hold a central database of mobile numbers, called the Number Portability DataBase (NPDB). The body is to be funded by charging the operators porting fees.