Opinion Take your number along
I doubt serious consumers will shift companies for anything other than overbilling.
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Ever since 2006 — when I got my Idea number — I have woken up most mornings answering calls for a certain Mr Sethi. The tone of the calls have ranged from pleas to threats,for the nice Mr Sethi owes over Rs 50 lakh to various banks and credit card companies,some of which I did not even know operated in India.
Like me,Mr Sethi too seems to have agreed that these calls were indeed a pain,no wonder he changed the number.
I must have been really lucky to have got the number used by such a well-connected man,though I would have preferred a number that only had my name on it.
I checked with Idea,who told me they had no idea how this happened. The mobile store from where I bought the prepaid SIM said mobile companies often recycled numbers. I confronted them with this piece of information. They flatly denied and even asked me how could I have possibly stumbled upon something so improbable.
Since Idea services were good and I never had any billing problems,I chose to stick to the number. But every time I get a rude awakening,originally meant for Mr Sethi,I call up customer care and vent my frustration. During one such interaction,a certain call centre executive accepted that the number might have been allotted to someone else earlier.
All this was before the government decided to oblige Indias mobile customers with the option of number portability — not that number portability would have been of any use to me. Now you can shift to another operator for a nominal port fee of Rs 19. You can shift again,provided you have been with your current service provider for over 90 days.
But I doubt serious consumers will shift companies for anything other than overbilling. Maybe some people would want to move over for some specific service or connectivity issue. It also remains to be seen how the Indian hyper mobile customer the sort that use two dual SIM phones and still carry a few SIMs in the wallet for good measure use this new facility. Even a 1 paisa change in SMS rates could be enough to see a mass migration in this segment.
But there is no doubt that number portability will force companies to clean up their act. I am sure most customers have already got calls from their present service provider asking if they are satisfied with their service. Soon you could get calls from their competitors asking if you are satisfied with your existing service provider and whether you would like to switch over. The fun has just begun.
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