Why wait another year for number portability?
Published:Saturday | June 21, 2014 | 12:00 AM
THE EDITOR, Sir:
'Number portability by end of year' was title of the story carried in The Gleaner on March 6, 2014, in which it reported State Minister Julian Robinson as saying that, by November to December, number portability would be implemented first with mobile numbers, and fixed lines coming on stream in the following year.
A year earlier, Minister Robinson, in his 2013-14 Sectoral Debate presentation, had declared we would have number portability by March 2014. Now, after that timeline has elapsed, the minister is telling us number portability will come on stream by May 2015.
The poor excuse given for the delay is that LIME is unable to provide number portability for landline, at this time, and Flow and Digicel have refused to sign off on number portability if it's not in full (mobile and landline at the same time).
Why is LIME unable to comply with full implementation of number portability? What is meant by the vague excuse of "legacy systems" preventing them from signing off on the full package? And why is Digicel and Flow refusing to sign off on mobile number portability, in the first instance, as the minister indicated in March 2014?
WHY HOLD US TO RANSOM?
Why must mobile and landline portability be married together? Were they always joined at the hip, so that one cannot be implemented before the other? Why should nearly two million mobile customers be held to ransom because Digicel and Flow are insisting mobile and landline portability must be implemented together?
After so many years of talk and missed deadlines, the people of Jamaica are forced to wait another year for number portability, without any good reason given for this extended wait. It also appears the minister has no real power to force these three companies to comply with agreed deadlines.
In 2012, the proposed timetable for implementation of number portability was set at one year (Provisions for Number Portability Rules www.mstem.gov.jm). In 2013, this schedule was pushed back to 2014, and now it's being pushed back to 2015.
Given this trend, we cannot be certain that when May 2015 comes, we won't be told that the timeline is being pushed back to 2016. Once again, the Jamaican consumer is held ransom by these service providers, and all the minister can do is stand by and watch.
BRAD BARRETT