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(VietNamNet Bridge)-The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement of which Vietnam expects to become a member, requires Vietnam to implement the MNP (mobile number portability) plan in the next five years. A familiar plan would be considered to be applied for fixed line subscribers.

MNP is a must

According to the Telecommunication Agency under the Ministry of Information and Communication, MNP would help push up the healthy competition in the telecom market, while bringing a lot of benefits to users and mobile businesses.

The officials of the agency emphasized that MNP is an inevitable tendency, while MNP has been carried out at more rapidly and strongly all over the world.

In Europe, for example, MNP has been completed, while the process is being undertaken in America. Asia would be the next region to see the MNP process.

Also according to the Telecommunication Agency, with the strong economic development and the deeper integration into the world, Vietnam’s telecom industry needs to draw up the development which pushes up the market opening process, strengthens the competition among businesses and better serves the demand of users. And MNP service providing is one of the most important steps to be taken to implement the plan.

MNP has also been a request set up by the international telecommunication organizations of which Vietnam is a member.

The Ministry of Information and Communication is now joining the negotiations for TPP. Meanwhile, the draft of the TPP agreement requests Vietnam to implement the MNP plan in the next five years.

At the meetings and workshops organized by ITU, APEC Tel and some international organization, Vietnam has been advised to carry out MNP and apply reasonable procedures for shifting networks in order to ensure the flexibility, stability and convenience for both clients and relating units.

What does “success” mean?

In principle, analysts would assess the success of the MNP process after considering the proportions, or the numbers of subscribers to change the network operators.

In some countries, the shifting from 2G to 3G services within the same network would be considered as MNP. Therefore, the proportions of subscribers changing networks in the countries are relatively high, over 10 percent.

As for the countries, which do not count on the cases of shifting from 2G to 3G services as MNP, the MNP plan would be recognized as successful, if 2 percent of subscribers changes networks.

Hong Kong, South Korea, Australia, Spain and Sweden have been cited as the countries or territories which have been succeeded with the high percentage of MNP, over 6 percent, which has brought considerable benefits to the national economy.

According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, the most important thing for now is to choose reasonable solutions for three models: call routing, data management and network change management.

Vietnam has learned from the experiences of some nations that in order to ensure success, Vietnam needs to have some other factors. First, the time needed to shift to other networks (from the moment when subscribers send proposal on network shifting to the moment when they begin using services of the new network operators) should be as short as possible.

Secondly, low network change fee, or fee exemption would help more encourage users.

Thirdly, the clients’ personal information must not be influenced by the shifting.

Some countries have not succeeded with MNP, including Ireland, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, France, Japan and Singapore because of the low percentage of the subscribers with MNP demand.