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Mobile Number Portability
in Ghana
Third Year Report
National Communications Authority
August 26, 2014
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
1
Key Points
Mobile Number Portabil ity (MNP), a system which allows mobile
subscribers to change from one network to another without changing any
part of their mobile number, was launched in Ghana on July 7, 2011.
By the end of the third year of operation, 1,655,404 porting requests had
been successfully completed since launch. The third year total of 838,202
represents an 87% increase over the second year.
The total number of completed ports from launch until 30 th June 2014 is
approximately 6% of the total active mobile numbers in Ghana. This far
exceeds any other MNP implementation in sub -Saharan Africa.
While each of the mobile networks in Ghana have gained and lost
customers through porting, at the end of the 3 r d year two networks were
showing a net gain from porting and four were showing a net loss.
The speed of processing porting requests has increased signif icantly. In
June 2014, the average time to complete the porting process after request
submission was 4 minutes, 16 seconds. 91% were completed in 5 minutes
or less and 67% were completed in 2 minutes or less.
Statistics indicate that most customers who ported were satisf ied with
their decision. 72% of the numbers which were ported during the f irst
three years remain ported.
The success rate of porting requests submitted was 81% in the third year,
varying between 75% and 85% o n a monthly basis . However, a signif icant
percentage of the request which did not succeed were spurious and were
not related to actual customers attempting to port.
The central MNP system and the counterpart sys tems at each network
continue to function generally well, and service disruptions are detected
quickly and relevant personnel notif ied by the late response alert system.
During the third year, approximately 5 out of every 1,000 porting requests
were reversed on the basis that the porting request should not have taken
place for a variety of reasons. Systems are being implemented to better
detect those responsible and to reduce this already low rate.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
2
Statistics
In the third year of MNP in Ghana ending July 6, 2014, 838,202 porting
requests were completed successful ly. This is an 87% increase over the
447,095 requests completed in the second year. The compound annual growth
of completed porting requests is 50.5%.
The cumulative total number of requests completed since launch in 2011 was
1,655,404, which represents approximately 6% of the total act ive mobile
numbers in the market . Note that due to duplication in the methodology for
counting total active mobile numbers and the fact that many Ghanaian
customers have more than one account and number, the percentage of actual
individuals who have taken advantage of the porting process is l ikely much
higher than 6%.
Direct comparison of different countries’ porting rates can be problematic, as
the statistics are reported inconsistently, and port ing rates are affected by
many market factors, such as speed, cost, and ease of port ing, number of
mobile networks, and the competitive landscape. However, MNP in Ghana is
remarkably more successful than efforts in the three other sub-Saharan Afr ica
countries with MNP, which record annual porting rates of 0.5%, 0.07%, and
0.004%. Ghana’s annual porting rate was 1.6% in its f irst year, and 2.9% in its
third year.
Chart 1 below shows the number of completed, aborted (unsuccessful), and
blocked porting requests on a month -by-month basis from launch through the
end of June, 2014.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
3
Chart 1 – Month by Month Por t ing Requests
Chart 2 below shows each request category’s cumulat ive numbers from launch
through the end of June, 2014.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
4
Chart 2 – Cumulat ive Port ing Requests
The rate of porting is entirely consistent with expectations for a market such
as in Ghana and a porting system that is consumer -friendly and operating
efficiently. The performance to date far surpasses reported results in other
MNP implementations in Africa.
All mobile networks are active part icipants in the MNP process , with
customers porting in and out of every network. Table 1 below shows the new
porting f low for each network through June 30, 201 4, along with the impact
on each operator’s subscriber base .
Airtel Expresso Glo MTN Tigo Vodafone
Net Gain/(Loss) (58,687) (858) (16,119) (402,244) 249,725 228,183
% of Base -1.7% -0.6% -1.2% -3.0% 6.2% 3.4%
Table 1 – Total Completed Por ts by Network by End Year 3
It is important to avoid drawing conclusions that cannot be supported by this
data. There are many different factors that can lead customers to port their
numbers. Also note that the cumulative port ing for any given network is not
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
5
sufficiently large to have been the sole cause of changes in market rank for
that network.
At the end of the third year, 72% of all numbers which had been ported
remained ported; in other words, they had not ported back to their original
network and had not become inactive. Over the three years of porting so far,
this represents an approximate 1% rate of porting back to the original ne twork
or becoming inactive each month . This compares favorably to the overal l
market average churn rate, which indicates that 4.5% of customers leave a
network each month. Users of MNP therefore appear to be more loyal than
average.
As of the end of the third year, all mobile networks in Ghana ha ve continued
their policies of absorbing the porting fee on behalf of the customer porting
to them. The volume of completed porting requests in the third year has
reduced the per-port cost by 81%. That factor and the higher loyalty described
above validates the networks’ decision to cover the porting fee.
Performance
In Ghana’s porting process, a customer wishing to port will vis it the agent of
the network he wishes to join (the “recipient” netw ork), who submits the
porting request to the central system. When matched with the free validating
SMS sent by the customer, the request is passed to his current network (the
“donor” network), who must approve or block the request. Upon receipt of an
approval, the recipient network will send an instruction to commence the
actual porting, and the donor network will send confirmation that the
customer’s account has been closed. All networks in Ghana are then notif ied
of that number’s new location at the recip ient.
Processing time for a porting request after it has reached the central system
and has been matched with the validating SMS thus depends on two responses
from the donor and one from the recipient. The response time quality of
service standards have ensured that porting is extremely fast in Ghana,
beating any international benchmark.
As measured from the moment a porting request is eligible for processing until
it is completed, in June, 2014 the average porting time was 4 minutes, 15
seconds. 91% of porting requests were completed in f ive minutes or less , and
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
6
67%, or two-thirds of the requests were completed in 2 minutes or less. Chart
3 shows the rate at which porting requests were completed during that month.
Chart 3 –Port ing Request Complet ion T im es, June, 2014
Average porting speed can be negatively affected by occasional disruptions in
an operator’s internal systems , failure of those systems to act upon a
particular request , or by maintenance or malfunction of the central porting
system or in operators’ connections with it. The automated late response alert
implemented in 2013 notif ies the relevant personnel by SMS and email each
time a response has not been received as expected, which mitigates the
impact of such incidents. In the third year of porting, this system sent 11,313
late response alerts.
Porting success rate is affected by aborted and blocked ports and is another
important measure of performance. A porting request which is not matched
with a validation SMS will be aborted by the system after 2 days. A request
wil l be also aborted if the recipient does not act within 2 days after the donor
has approved a request. A blocked request is one which the d onor network
has cited one of the several permitted reasons to deny approving the request,
such as the account having been on their network for less than thirty days, or
the phone/SIM having been reported stolen.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
7
Chart 4 below shows on a monthly basis the relative percentage of requests
which are completed, aborted, and blocked.
The overall success rate of requests submitted in the third year of porting was
81.0%, marginal ly down from 81.7% in the second year. The monthly success
rate varied from a low of 75.2% to a high of 84.7%.
The blocked port rate has remained fairly constant at 5.4% for the year
monthly low of 4.5% and high of 6.4%. Blocking is the term denoting requests
to which the donor network does not agree, and for each such request they
must indicate which of the few permitted reasons applies. There is no
indication that blocking is deliberately used by donor network s to prevent
porting.
By far the most common reason for blocking is “account less than 30 days
old”, meaning that the customer’s account was f irst opened at that network
less than 30 days previously. Normally, the central porting system will not
accept porting requests for numbers which had been ported in the previous
30 days. However, while emergency r estore requests were being processed to
reverse wrongful ports, that protection was temporari ly disabled and a few
requests would slip through to be blocked by the donor network. That
loophole has now been closed and there should be no further blocks for t hat
particular reason.
Some blocks are caused by the bil l ing system misinterpret ing the date a
change was made to a customer account (such as prepaid to postpaid,
reactivation upon credit recharge, SIM replacement) to mean the date the
account was opened. Additional monitoring and discussion with the operators
should allow these deficiencies in their software to be corrected.
The remaining blocks are l ikely in respect of customers who have just opened
accounts with new numbers but want to port those new n umbers almost
immediately. This seems i l logical, because the customer is not yet very
attached to this new number and few contacts are even aware of the number.
After blocks due to the other causes described above have reduced , we can
decide whether the remaining blocks for this unexplained customer behavior
warrant any further investigation.
The abort rate in the third year was 13.6%, and varied between 9.9% and
20.3% on a monthly basis. Almost all aborts were caused by the lack of a
matching validat ion SMS. Some were due to agents submitting porting
requests without any actual customer, and the operators are working to
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
8
determine why they would do so. Other aborts, in which no SMS was sent b y
the customer, demonstrate that the validation system is working .
Chart 4 – Aborted, Com pleted , B locked Requests Norm al ized to 100%
There will always be a certain percentage of blocked and aborted requests
each month which demonstrates that the porting systems are performing
properly to val idate requests and protect customers . The only way to
determine what success rate should be considered normal is to continue with
the ongoing task of analyzing and understanding customer, agent, and bil l ing
system behavior and to control or eliminat e any issues identif ied which are
not in the customer’s interest. We therefore expect modest reductions in the
blocking and abort rates going forward, which wil l produce a s l ightly improved
success rate.
Challenges and the Way Forward
The rate of porting in Ghana remains consistent and stable. The goal of
empowering any customer who wished to change networks but was hesitant
to do so because his number would have changed has been achieved, but as
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
9
with any system, monitoring and maintena nce are required and incremental
improvement is possible.
Ghana passed the 1 mill ion successful port milestone on October 12, 2013. As
shown in Chart 5 below, a s imple roll ing average method of prediction tells us
that we will approach and may reach 2 mill ion by the end of 2014.
Chart 5 – Completed Requests s ince Launch and Pred ict ion through 201 4
The fundamental principles of porting are very simple. A customer who ports
is not treated very differently than one who is only quitting one network and
joining another. They both have to appear in person with their ID in order to
register with their new network, whether it is for a new number or one being
ported from another network . Registration information is held by each
network, not at a central point.
When the customer wants to bring his number to the new network, he must
also sign a porting request form which explains that he will be leaving behind
any credit or features at his former network, and he must send the va lidation
SMS described earl ier.
The behavior of porting agents in the f ield acting on behalf of the mobile
operators is sti l l a concern, but on the balance, the use of agents is posit ive.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
10
Otherwise, porting could not be ubiquitous and customers wishing to port
would suffer the expense and inconvenience of traveling to and queuing in
the operators’ off icial shops.
We have under development various software changes that will al low NCA and
operators to identify more quickly and effectively those agents who are
responsible for a disproportion ate share of inappropriate porting requests,
and we expect this to be operational within 2014.
Certain agents will , at t imes, tell potential customers that they are being given
a free SIM for a new network and wil l then submit a porting request on their
behalf, sending the validation SMS from the customer’s phone under the guise
of “registering the new SIM”. Customers later discover that their account has
been closed at their old network because the number was ported.
There is an emergency restore procedu re in place that, with the cooperation
of both networks involved, the customer, and Porting Access Ghana, will
quickly restore the customer’s number to the original network. This can
usually be done within one or two business days, depending on the availab il ity
of the customer to explain the circumstances that led to the port. We have
begun to implement technical and procedural improvements that should allow
a majority of emergency restore procedures to take place on the same day as
the complaint is registered.
Meanwhile, it would be wrong to characterize the phenomenon as an
epidemic. In the third porting year, the rate of emergency restores was 5.4
out of every one thousand successful ports.
Consumer Issues
If a mobile customer is dissatisf ied about any aspect of the service experience
at their present network in Ghana, they can move to another network easi ly
without losing their mobile number. Al l they need to do is visit an agent or
shop of the network they wish to join and take with them proper identif ication
and their phone. The process is free, fast, and reliable.
All customers should read the porting request form careful ly and be sure to
understand it before signing it or handing their phone to an agent . It is
important to recognize that in porting, a customer is agreeing to leave his
current network, and that SIM will stop working when the porting process is
completed. No agent who claims that a number can be active on two networks
at the same time should be trusted; it is impossible.
Mobile Number Portability in Ghana - Third Year Report – August 26, 2014
11
The recipient network – that which the customer is seeking to join - is
responsible to keep the customer informed regarding the progress of the
porting process and to resolve any diff iculties which occur. We have foun d
that in the small percentage of porting requests which experience diff iculties,
it is general ly due to deficiencies or lapses at the network to which the
customer is porting, not at the network they are leaving.
Remember that anyone who is not sat isf ied at their new network can port
their number again after only 30 days , either to their previous network or to
a new one.
NCA is available to resolve any diff iculty with porting and can be reached
through these means:
Web site: http://www.nca.org.gh/40/125 /Make-a-Complaint.html
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 030 701 1419
Facebook: MNP Ghana (group page)
Again, the Authority expresses its appreciation to the staff and management
of the mobile networks and the central system operator Porting Access Ghana
Limited as well as to the customers who have made Ghana the unquestioned
MNP leader in Africa and placed us among the top MNP operations in the
world. NCA looks forward to further refinement and improvement in the
system.