Push For Faster Mobile Phone Number Portability: Thailand

[webfact]

Push for faster number portability

Sirivish Toomgum,

The Nation

BANGKOK: -- The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission will meet with five telecom operators and Clearinghouse Co this week to urge them gradually to expand the capacity of mobile-phone-number portability.

NBTC member Prawit Leesatapornwongsa said he had personally made appointments with them to discuss whether they could boost the capacity step by step to 40,000 numbers per day from the present 2,500. They will also discuss when they could begin this expansion, and how long it would take.

The NBTC's portability regulations allow mobile-phone subscribers to switch to different networks while keeping their existing phone numbers. Five telecom operators co-founded Clearinghouse to mediate this service.

Prawit said Advanced Info Service and Total Access Communication (DTAC) recently started expanding the points where customers could request portability service; at present, it is available in about 20 provinces. The watchdog wants to see major cellular operators offering the service nationwide soon.In February, TrueMove said all 250 of its outlets nationwide could serve customers' number-transfer requests.

While TrueMove wants to migrate as many as customers as possible to Real Move's third-generation service via the portability channel, it has reportedly received little support from other telecom operators, which said some technical limitations had impeded their ability to expand their number-transfer capacity. TrueMove and Real Move are part of the True Group.

Prawit said he was waiting for the NBTC office to present to the commission's telecom committee for its consideration the new portability fee of Bt70 per transfer from the present Bt99.

-- The Nation 2012-05-02

[BKKBrit]

I moved a month ago to AIS after 10 years with Orange/TrueMove. The service became untenable to the extent I couldn't make or receive calls from my office and certain parts of Bangkok for 8 months. The move to AIS, although far from being hassle-free, was worth it.

If it's a company registration, documents are needed and make sure you tell them you need IDD access, too. When porting they assume you don't until you try and make an international call - so tell them if that's the case.

[lomatopo]

"While TrueMove wants to migrate as many as customers as possible to Real Move's third-generation service via the portability channel, it has reportedly received little support from other telecom operators, which said some technical limitations had impeded their ability to expand their number-transfer capacity. TrueMove and Real Move are part of the True Group."

These knuckle-heads at True are just plain incompetent, not that it should come as some huge surprise.

[astanhope]

True is supposedly the only network that offers 3G in Chaiyaphum. Do they suck bad enough that it's not worth switching?

[Jayman]

So they are being asked to speed up the time for porting and lower the cost to the consumer. Yeah, that'l be the day.

[wpcoe]

I think the headline is a bit misleading. To me, "faster mobile phone number portability" means the process is completed in a shorter amount of time. I see nothing mentioned about that in the article. What *is* discussed is a larger volume of MNPs being permitted daily.

True is supposedly the only network that offers 3G in Chaiyaphum. Do they suck bad enough that it's not worth switching?

Before you initiate an MNP, go to your current carrier (e.g. DTAC, AIS) and make sure they have your current address and passport/ID number on record. When you initiate the MNP with True they will submit your personal data to your current carrier, and if it doesn't match, the MNP will probably be rejected.

I MNP'd from DTAC to True a little over a year ago, and then MNP'd from TrueMove to TrueMove-H in January. The MNP process was easy. The True shop employees completed much of the paperwork for me, I filled in basic info and signed it. They then gave me a SIM and told me to wait a few days until I showed no signal on my phone and then to swap SIMs. The MNP from DTAC left me without service for about six hours, as I recall. The second MNP to TrueMove-H was seamless -- I noticed no service loss at all -- as soon as I saw no signal I swapped SIMs and within a minute had service again.

I have found no fault with TrueMove/TrueMove-H service coverage. I do find many of the True shop employees not knowledgable about their product. In a way, I don't fault them for not knowing what service plans are on the internet, as those plans seem to change almost daily and the English & Thai web pages are often not identical.

In the 14 months I've had True service, I have YET to receive a SINGLE INVOICE in the mail. Every time I go in the shop (monthly for the past four months) they show me the screen with my correct address and even show me an onscreen version of the invoice that the computer shows was mailed. They tell me that NEXT month I will get an invoice, "for sure." Riiiight.

[lomatopo]

Only about 75% of the MNP requests are ultimately successfully processed.

There are limited locations where a customer can initiate the MNP process.

The current provider is often reluctant to "free" the customer so they can fall back on many different reasons (document mismatch is the most common, also account status) for not "freeing" the customer.

AFAIK, there are no more blocks of numbers available and everyone is running low on numbers.

TrueMove H basically shot themselves in the foot, leg, arm, chest, and head by making it so difficult to transition their best customers: TrueMove customers, and now they're bitching about it. What a bunch of morons.

[Jayman]

This is a bit off topic but what is the difference between truemove and truemove H? I've had the same number with AIS for like 10 years so any switch of provider I endeavor must allow me to keep my number. I have been fairly happy with AIS and now that they have 3G coverage where I live I'm even happier. I have considered True before but not sure what the advantages are vs the hassles involved with porting my number.

[Jayman]

I think the headline is a bit misleading. To me, "faster mobile phone number portability" means the process is completed in a shorter amount of time. I see nothing mentioned about that in the article. What *is* discussed is a larger volume of MNPs being permitted daily.

That's what it means to me too and also how I read it in the article. If they are increasing the volume of customers ported daily (mentioned in 1st paragraph) then that means the customers waiting will have their numbers ported faster.

[lomatopo]

This is a bit off topic but what is the difference between truemove and truemove H? I've had the same number with AIS for like 10 years so any switch of provider I endeavor must allow me to keep my number. I have been fairly happy with AIS and now that they have 3G coverage where I live I'm even happier. I have considered True before but not sure what the advantages are vs the hassles involved with porting my number.

TrueMove is the legacy mobile provider. TrueMove H is reselling CAT 3G. If you were to change providers, assuming your device supports 850 Mhz 3G, then you might consider TrueMove H or DTAC.

The MNP process is generally straight-forward. Do you have pre-paid or post-paid with AIS? You should make sure AIS has your exact name and passport number ( I had gotten a new passport since I had first registered with AIS so needed to update that information with them.) on file and associated with your SIM, and if post-paid make sure your account is in good standing. I think you have to pay 99 baht and lose any remaining pre-paid balance. In my experience it has taken 3 - 7 calendar days.

You can/should experiment with a TrueMove H SIM before porting as it is so easy to do. You can forward, by initiating a request to the network from the handset, your AIS number to any other number, so you could forward all calls to the experimental TrueMove H number. I did that for a few weeks and it worked fine.

http://www.truemove-h.com/en//mnp.aspx

[Jayman]

This is a bit off topic but what is the difference between truemove and truemove H? I've had the same number with AIS for like 10 years so any switch of provider I endeavor must allow me to keep my number. I have been fairly happy with AIS and now that they have 3G coverage where I live I'm even happier. I have considered True before but not sure what the advantages are vs the hassles involved with porting my number.

TrueMove is the legacy mobile provider. TrueMove H is reselling CAT 3G. If you were to change providers, assuming your device supports 850 Mhz 3G, then you might consider TrueMove H or DTAC.

The MNP process is generally straight-forward. Do you have pre-paid or post-paid with AIS? You should make sure AIS has your exact name and passport number ( I had gotten a new passport since I had first registered with AIS so needed to update that information with them.) on file and associated with your SIM, and if post-paid make sure your account is in good standing. I think you have to pay 99 baht and lose any remaining pre-paid balance. In my experience it has taken 3 - 7 calendar days.

You can/should experiment with a TrueMove H SIM before porting as it is so easy to do. You can forward, by initiating a request to the network from the handset, your AIS number to any other number, so you could forward all calls to the experimental TrueMove H number. I did that for a few weeks and it worked fine.

http://www.truemove-h.com/en//mnp.aspx

I'm post paid AIS and my device supports 850 band on 3G as well as 900 (and 2100 and maybe 1 more).

I'm just trying to work out the advantages to switching over staying with AIS. I guess since things are working well for me I should just stay where I'm at for the time being.

Thanks for the helpful advice to make the process smoother to port.

[wpcoe]

TrueMove H basically shot themselves in the foot, leg, arm, chest, and head by making it so difficult to transition their best customers: TrueMove customers, and now they're bitching about it. What a bunch of morons.

What is TrueMove H doing to make it difficult? Granted, I am only one anecdotal report, but when I MNP'd from TrueMove to TrueMove H in January, it was a VERY easy process.