Over the last couple of years I have been cursed by having to live with a hugely incompetent mobile service provider. Although my office is in the heart of Bangalore, less than ten minutes' walk from the central artery M G Road, I have trouble with calls times without number and in the early evenings, peak period for newspapers, the service virtually collapses.
When I narrated this to the CEO of my service provider he confessed he faced the same problem!
I put it down to my misfortune in selecting a small service provider but a fellow scribe operating out of Gurgaon said his life was made equally miserable though his service provider was among the biggest and its founder-leader had got more business awards than he could possibly count.
Why do the two of us stick to our respective wretched service providers? Quite simply, changing means having to acquire a new number, thereby losing contact for good with a whole lot of people who get in touch only once in a while.
The mobile phone has become so central in our lives, particularly for professionals and older people with friends and contacts all over the world who call maybe once in a year, that having to change your number is like becoming unpersoned for a while.
My children in college are ready to change their service provider (number) far more easily, but then they are teenagers.
The villain at the heart of this existential trauma is the absence of mobile number portability in India and the gentleman in charge of the part of government that has to be decided on the matter is Dayanidhi Maran.
The operators don't want MNP as with it around they cannot get away with their inefficiency. The regulator TRAI had recommended that MNP be brought in from April this year but the government or DoT or Maran has turned it down with a load of excuses.
After adverse public reaction to un-attributed news stories indicating the government's mind there has been at least one report in a prominent paper saying MNP will certainly come; the government only wants to take everyone along with it! The fact that in such a clear case of sectional interests versus those of consumers, Maran has allowed himself to be influenced by the former says volumes about him.
It will take around a year to bring MNP from the day you decide to do so. Meanwhile, the number of countries in the world without MNP gets smaller and smaller. Among the latest to join the MNP league is Japan, with the US, most of Europe and some of the most dynamic parts of Asia already there. Singapore has the distinction of being the first to introduce MNP a whole decade ago!
By now there is a fair body of global experience to suggest that MNP enhances competition. Also, the change is more feared by service providers than its consequences actually turn out to be.
When MNP was introduced in the US in 2003 around 30 million subscribers were expected to port in the first 12 months, but only 7.8 million did. Trying to get service providers to agree to MNP is like getting Indian business to agree to tariff cuts since 1991. How import competition eventually helped Indian business to stand on its feet is history.
A key issue in deciding on MNP is the costs involved. TRAI has put it at Rs 940 crore (Rs 9.4 billion) and recommended the cost be shared by the service providers. Not a small sum but let's put it in context.
The mobile services industry, according to its association COAI, has so far invested Rs 60,000 crore (Rs 600 billion) and this investment is growing at 12 per cent a year. If the service providers don't want to pay, should the government foot the bill? The COAI says the government in its entirety earns Rs 33,000 crore (Rs 330 billion) of revenue from the industry in a year, which works out to 17-26 per cent of industry revenue.
Most importantly is that the subscriber base is growing exponentially. The industry is adding 5 million subscribers a month and the base is likely to touch 250 million by the end of the year. One research agency has predicted an industry revenue of Rs 72,000 crore (Rs 720 billion) by 2008.
This could well turn out to be an underestimation. What is Rs 940 crore (Rs 9.4 billion) compared to such numbers? A massively growing revenue base implies easier amortisation of whatever burden anyone has to bear. These numbers also refute the industry argument that it is not mature enough to shoulder the financial burden of MNP.
If the public had its way it would put the industry reps and the minister and his officials in a room and lock them up (they tend to get along rather well) until they hammered out a solution between themselves on how to share the costs.
If the union finance ministry is unwilling to bear any additional expense even though revenue buoyancy is guaranteed through volume growth, then the communications ministry should take the matter to the cabinet with its own firm recommendations.
Then the public will know whom to blame. It is absurd for every member of the government to take pride in the Indian economy being the second fastest growing in the world and still stick to an anti-competitive practice, which is being given up by most of the rest of the world.