It seems that Mobile number portability (MNP) in India has been a complete failure. The number of requests received for MNP since November 2010 (launch date) has been 18.1 million till the month of August 2011. This accounts to just 2% of India’s wireless base of 865.71 million.
The 2% of MNP requests in India are said to be the lowest in the world. The months of March and August saw numbers fluctuate in from 2 to 2.6 million per month.
Surprisingly, most of the requests include shifting to bigger operators instead of smaller and new entrants. In other countries customers move from large operators to new entrants due to bad service or high call rates. This suggests that customers of new entrants are actually concerned that some of these licences could be cancelled owing to legal complications, or that they dislike their service/customer care or prices, and are therefore moving to safer bets such as Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea.
Even with a total of 97% subscribers on pre-paid plans, MNP has not been beneficial and has not met with its goals.