The Telecoms Academy confirms that 086 and 087 numbers have successfully been tested and ported in test environments.
The company believes it will only be a matter of time for holders of these numbers, mostly corporate customers with large inbound call-centres, to officially port to alternative network operators offering better prices while retaining their numbers.
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) is expected to write this into legislation shortly. The move will benefit businesses like banks and airlines with large call centres which have been unable to port their numbers despite November 2006 legislation allowing for mobile number portability and April 2010’s implementation of geographical number portability.
“This has been a bone of contention in the industry since 2010,” says Felicity Menge, owner of The Telecoms Academy. “The impact that it will have on the telecoms industry is substantial.
“It will stimulate even more competition in the sector and provide exponential benefits including improved service and lower cost-to-customer and businesses.
“We can expect to see the telecoms sales channel taking some strain as providers will compete in a new sales channel which this will create. 086 and 087 numbers are non-geographical and are often preferred by call-centres with the largest amount of voice traffic. In the industry we refer to them as golden numbers.”
Menge explains that number portability is a process that allows consumers to switch licensees without having to change their assigned number. It has numerous benefits and is aimed at protecting and benefiting consumers and therefore also stimulating competition.
As a result of amendments made to the Telecommunications Act in 2001, mobile number portability (MNP) was first promulgated on 30 September 2005.
The Number Portability Company, jointly owned by Cell C, MTN, Liquid Telecom, Telkom and Vodacom, was established to administer and track all porting processes when MNP was introduced across South Africa on 10 November 2006.
Geographic Number Portability was introduced from April 2010, allowing consumers and companies with location-bound telephone numbers to keep their numbers by porting them to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers regardless of location. However, 080, 086 and 087 National Destination Code numbers could not, which has now been corrected.