Vodafone gets 50 per cent of ported numbers

Barely one month into Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in Ghana and Vodafone Ghana has already taken a huge lead with almost 50 per cent of ported numbers flowing its way.

The Head of Corporate Communications at Vodafone Ghana told Adom News there is a restriction on releasing actual figures of ported numbers to any network “but at least I can tell you we have almost 50 per cent of the total figure of ported numbers right now”.

This was confirmed by a highly placed source at the National Communications Authority (NCA), who said as at the time of collating the successfully ported number on Sunday July 31, 2011, Vodafone had almost 50 per cent of ported numbers so no other network could have had more.

The NCA said operators were not allowed to publish actual figures and certain information about MNP, but it was fair for Vodafone to claim to be in the lead because “that is the fact.”

The NCA reported that in 25 days, there were 21,059 successful ports, but the NCA has said it would not publish network-by-network figures.

Adom News is reliably informed that some operators fought for a chance for all operators to publish their actual figures, but others were against that idea.

Vodafone Ghana CEO, Kyle Whitehill was one of two telecom CEOs who embraced MNP and said it would increase competition, quality service provision and change the market share structure eventually.

Other telecom executives rubbished MNP as a system that would cause a very insignificant change in the market structure in terms of subscriber numbers, but Mr. Whitehill believed MNP would change the structure in operator earnings because more high value customers would be porting than low spenders would.