Vodafone emerges biggest gainer of MNP

NEW DELHI, Feb 27 (The Economic Times): Nearly a month after the nationwide rollout of mobile number portability services, Vodafone Essar has emerged as the biggest gainer, notching up 0.19 million new subscribers, whereas state-owned BSNL lost more customers than it attracted from other service providers. Since the launch of MNP services, nearly 2 million mobile subscribers have switched service providers using the facility. MNP allows users to change service providers while retaining their phone numbers. "A total of 19,79,600 numbers of subscribers have ported their numbers so far using the MNP facility," according to official figures provided in the Rajya Sabha by the Department of Telecom (DoT). Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had launched nationwide MNP services on January 20 this year. It has been a month since the service was started and as expected, older GSM operators like Vodafone Essar, Airtel and Idea Cellular continue to lure the bulk of subscribers to their networks. According to latest available figures, Vodafone Essar gained as many as 0.19 million customers, followed by Idea Cellular, with a net gain of 0.15 million subscribers.