Mobile Number Portability: A Case Study of Kenya

Abstract

In the telecommunications industry, mobile numbers are increasingly being seen as an asset of the regulator. The freedom of the customer using it is left to him/her to decide which service provider to use while retaining the same number. Mobile number portability (MNP) has been introduced to provide a platform for this freedom to the customer. The Telecommunications market Regulator in Kenya, the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), began the course of mobile number portability in 2010 through newspaper advertisement. The regulator had an aim that in the end, the right customer experience will be provided by the service providers, and help service providers to build profitable and lasting relationships between the service providers and their customer, and to differentiate themselves in the market. In this paper, we seek to evaluate the performance of MNP in Kenya since its launch. This paper seeks to find out how the service has performed after the first three months of operation. We survey and analyze MNP framework in Kenya and compare that to MNP in Japan, Finland, Sweden and Hong Kong to establish the future of MNP in Kenya. It first looks at the MNP framework as used in Kenya and the procedure for reversal in case the customer is dissatisfied with a service provider who moves to and makes a reference to how the service has performed in other markets such as Finland, Sweden, and Hong Kong in order to enable comparative observations. Since there has been very little literature published for countries in Africa, it will only make comments on countries like Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria. Further, it gives recommendations to the participating parties.