SYDNEY, Australia—Australia rolled out mobile number portability (MNP) on Tuesday, allowing mobile-phone users to change phone companies without changing their phone numbers.
The country’s small business community will benefit the most from the changes, according to a statement from the Australian Communications Authority (ACA). Without mobile number portability, the cost of changing mobile service providers outweighed the benefits for many small businesses, which faced costs of changing signage, stationery and advertising if they changed providers, according to the ACA.
Under the new MNP guidelines, porting will generally occur within hours, customers will not have to contact the operator from which they are leaving and an existing contract does not prevent a customer from changing providers. However, consumers changing in mid-contract may have to pay the remainder of contracts or contract termination fees.
During Australia’s first day of cell-phone number portability, Vodafone’s network crashed as it became overloaded due to a high volume of subscribers wanting to switch service providers. The company told potential customers to try switching to its service sometime during the next day.
The United Kingdom and Hong Kong are two other major markets that also offer MNP to consumers. The ACA said MNP will allow true competition throughout Australia’s mobile-phone industry.
