Abu Dhabi: The UAE Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) expects Mobile Number Portability (MNP) to be in place by March, which would give mobile phone users the choice to migrate to another service provider while retaining their existing mobile numbers, a top-ranking TRA official said yesterday.
"It will stimulate competition between the two operators because operators will try to hold onto their customers," Mohammad Nasser Al Ganem, TRA's director-general, told reporters here on the sidelines of an industry conference.
"The two operators [etisalat and du] are working on the infrastructure right now... there are some technical issues. By the end of the month, TRA will test it," Al Ganem said.
"Hopefully, we will have it [the MNP] in the first quarter of 2011," he added.
Al Ganem said he hoped the infrastructure sharing between etisalat and du will be possible in 2011.
Reacting to the development, Saeed Ahmad Seddiq Al Mutawa, Operations Director at Atlas Telecom, told Gulf News that mobile number portability is one of the key fundamentals of a multi-operator environment.
"It allows for a true level of competition while providing customers loyalty to their most important asset — which is their telephone number," Al Mutawa said.
Al Ganem ruled out the possibility of a third tele-communications operator in the UAE. "The market cannot take a third operator," he said. Separately, Al Ganem said the focus of the TRA is mainly going to be on broadband.
Overseas acquisitions
Ninety-nine per cent of UAE residents have mobile phones, a recent survey by the TRA showed. Etisalat's monopoly in the UAE market ended in 2007 with du's entry.
The UAE telecommunications market has since become saturated and etisalat is expanding its business mainly through overseas acquisitions. Etisalat is currently one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world and the leading operator in Middle East and Africa, operating in 18 countries and servicing over 100 million customers.
In 2009, etisalat reported annual net revenues of Dh30.83 billion and net profit of Dh8.84 billion marking a 5 per cent and 16 per cent increase respectively, compared to 2008. Recently, etisalat agreed to a provisional $12 billion (Dh44 billion) deal with a group led by major shareholder Kharafi Group to buy a 46 per cent stake in Kuwait telecom operator, Zain. Du, however, has no plans to expand its business beyond the UAE.
