Lifting the Switching Barrier in the Indian Telecom sector – A review based on Mobile Number Portability

The second largest economy with highly competitive telecommunication market needs to be treated with at most care. The service provider realised the increased profitability from investing in retention strategies than investing on a fresh customer. Knowing this, the telecommunication market in the recent past has created intangible barriers around subscribers known as switching barriers. It prevents customers from switching to another service provider with losing present mobile numbers based on customer service satisfaction. The economy entertaining a perfect competition was facing an unbelievably difficult task, as the service providers are preventing customers to exercise their will. This has paved its way to highlight the importance of reducing switching barriers kept by the mobile service providers. The luxury exercised by the service providers in gaining monopolistic competitive advantage in the highly competitive open market has to be regulated. With this view TRAI introduced MNP in the last decade. The responsive figures of MNP prove that it has been received with high acceptance rate. This literature study points out the reduction level of switching barrier in the market by the introduction of MNP. It also throws light on the possible future study to irradiate switching barriers.