Romanian regulators propose shorter timeline for number portability

Romanians could move their telephone number from one operator to another more quickly, as the National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications (ANCOM) has submitted a draft decision on telephone number portability for public consultation. Telephone users will switch to a new network in maximum one working day, from a prior timeline of four days. The administrative procedures should take three days, down from 10 previously.

The potential service interruption in the transfer process is also reduced to four from five hours for landline numbers and three hours instead of four for mobile telephony. In practice, the duration of service interruption is approximately one hour, according to ANCOM. Subscribers can refuse the allocation of a temporary telephone number by the new provider during the whole process. The decision also includes a mandatory audio warning when calling a transferred number, as the charged tariff might exceed the one expected by the user. The portability service, introduced at end-2008, was used by over 677,000 people who changed telephone providers but kept the same telephone numbers. Over 450,000 of these were mobile telephony numbers and the rest landline numbers. Transferred numbers went up by 17 percent in 2011, compared to the year before. Every month, an average of 21,600 numbers were transferred. The highest number in December last year – over 34,000. editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Photoxpress.com)