Cell C said that around 8 times as many people port from Vodacom and MTN to Cell C as the other way around. This is despite a very ineffective porting system.
Cell C CEO Alan Knott-Craig told MyBroadband that around 6,000 people port to Cell C every week, and that it is a large net receiver of subscribers through mobile number portability (porting).
However, this number could be much higher. Knott-Craig said that porting should be a very quick and simple process, and should not take more than an hour.
In South Africa porting from one mobile operator to another can take a day or longer. This, said Knott-Craig, is a direct consequence of poor regulation.
The Cell C CEO said that effective regulation will not only speed up the porting process, but also remove obstacles which the large operators implement to make porting difficult to consumers.
Latest porting numbers
According to the Number Portability Company 1,473,012 mobile numbers have been successfully ported from November 2006 to end March 2013. This equates to an average monthly port figure of 19,130.
MyBroadband has received reliable information about South Africa’s porting numbers for the first quarter of 2013, which showed that Cell C was the biggest net gainer through porting.
According to the information received, Cell C gained just over 15,000 subscribers over the last three months.
In comparison, Telkom (8ta) gained 800 new users while Vodacom lost 5,000 subscribers and MTN lost 11,000 users.
March was a particularly strong month for Cell C where it gained 24,000 new subscribers and lost 2,800 – exactly the ratio of 8.6 to 1 which Knott-Craig was referring to.
via MyBroadband