Bahrain record in mobile network portability this year

Manama : The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) yesterday announced it has recorded 16,644 successful Mobile lines porting requests in the first quarter of 2016, with an average time taken of 28 minutes to port Mobile lines. 

This, according to the authority, is compared to 12,843 porting requests received in the first quarter of 2015. TRA also said in its statement that it has rejected 4,611 Mobile lines porting requests during the quarter, as against 2,964 requests rejected in the first quarter of 2015. 

TRA has introduced the Numbering portability Regulation in collaboration with the Telecommunications Operators in July 2011. The move provided customers the flexibility to transfer their mobile and fixed lines seamlessly between telecoms service providers.

Meanwhile, the successful porting requests for Fixed line numbers reached 542 compared to 429 in first quarter of 2015, whereas 119 were rejected compared to 34 in the first quarter of 2015. 

In total, 113,902 numbers in the telecom market are currently ported between telecom operators until the first quarter of 2016 with an average time taken to port of 28 minutes for Mobile lines and 6 hours and 24 minutes for fixed lines.

The major reasons cited by TRA for rejecting porting requests were: Customers providing wrong CPR numbers (or Commercial Registration numbers) that don’t match the registered subscriber’s CPR number, the actual Mobile or Fixed line number that is requested to be ported being out of service or the subscriber having a record of bad debt with his current service providers. 

The TRA also said consumers willing to port their numbers should submit the porting request during official work hours (Sunday-Thursday, 8:00am to 4:00pm) in order to benefit the most out of the set process and the agreed porting window among service providers, and get their telephone number ported at the same day.

Consumers are also advised to be aware of the date their bill is issued (referred to as a Billing Cycle) with their current service provider, to submit the porting request at least two days prior to the end of this date in order to avoid double billing from both operators.