UAE telecom regulator confirms 1.7m mobile numbers were ‘ported’ between Etisalat and du since 2013
Time taken to clear all approvals brought down to less than 60 minutes
Dubai: The UAE telecom regulator TDRA confirmed that 1.7 million mobile phone numbers had transferred between licensees since the launch of the ‘portability’ service back in 2013, while the number of porting requests from the beginning of this year until end o August was nearly 200,000.
Porting services were launched in the UAE in 2013 and Etisalat and du have made it a relatively seamless process for customers to switch from one provider to the other. “This turnout reflects TDRA’s success in delivering services and initiatives that contribute to raising customer satisfaction and happiness,” said the Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority in a statement.
TDRA said it developed systems and automated procedures, thereby optimizing the approval time for individuals’ requests to port numbers to become less than an hour for most of these requests, down from the previous approval time of seven working hours. “Through this service, we have given customers the opportunity to switch between operators and try their offerings while keeping the same telephone numbers, which are now an important part of our identity,” said Saif Bin Ghelaita, Executive Director of TDRA’s Technology Development Affairs Department.