The Mobile Number Portability (MNP) service, which at the time of its launch was talked about nothing more than "the abolition of mobile slavery", after three and a half years is still provided only if the subscriber changes the operator within the same subject Federation. When leaving this territory, the subscriber will not be able to save the phone number by transferring it to the network of another operator. Therefore, we have to admit the obvious: a full-fledged abolition of "mobile slavery" in Russia has not yet happened.
In Russia, the MNP service became available on December 1, 2013 in test mode. In April 2014, she began to work fully. Even on the eve of the launch of MNP, the top officials of the state (including the profile minister Nikolai Nikiforov) said that this service, which, at the suggestion of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, was called nothing but the abolition of mobile slavery, is expected by millions of Russian residents. In the fall of 2013, in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Nikolai Nikiforov cited the data of a sociological survey, according to which almost 50% of mobile users would like to potentially change their operator. As further practice showed, the number of people who actually used the service was somewhat less.
Perhaps, among the factors that influenced the popularity of MNP and the willingness of subscribers to use it, there is also the fact that number portability within the existing MNP scheme is possible only if the operator is changed within one constituent entity of the Russian Federation. In the decree of the government of the Russian Federation No. 1342 of December 9, 2014 "On the procedure for the provision of telephone services", paragraph 115 states that "the subscriber has the right to keep the subscriber number within the territory of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation in case of transferring the subscriber number."
Thus, according to Rossvyaz experts, if the numbering resource is allocated to the operator for use on the territory of a certain constituent entity of the Russian Federation, then the subscriber cannot keep his phone number when changing the subject. That is, if a subscriber, for example, moves to live from St. Petersburg to Moscow, then the phone number cannot be saved, since these are different subjects of the Federation. Such a restriction cannot but affect the popularity of the MNP service and in the full sense of the word is "mobile slavery", creating an additional barrier for subscribers when moving to another region, territory, district or republic within Russia.
According to representatives of mobile operators, there are many obstacles to the possibility of using MNP to be expanded and to keep the number even when moving from one region of the country to another. These are the features of building a telecommunication network in the Russian Federation, and traffic routing rules. And in general, according to them, this idea has not been worked out at the moment, either from a technical, economic, or from a regulatory point of view.
However, the Central Scientific Research Institute of Communications (TsNIIS), which is the operator of the ported numbers database, says that the institute has no restrictions for the technical implementation of MNP within different constituent entities of the Federation, while noting that the technical council created on base of TsNIIS, repeatedly discussed this with representatives of telecom operators and the regulator, however, no specific decisions were made in this regard.
Whatever the true reasons for the fact that MNP in our country has existed in such a "stripped down" version for more than three years (whether it is the need to change the regulatory framework, technical aspects or economic issues), we have to admit the obvious: the complete abolition of "mobile slavery "has not happened in our country yet.
It is important to answer the following question: who, apart from subscribers, is currently interested in the full implementation of MNP in Russia? Obviously, these are not mobile operators. At one time they reacted very coolly to the idea of introducing MNP, talking about how it will be technically very difficult to implement, costly and generally pointless, since this is a niche service that most subscribers do not need. But they had to launch MNP, because there was another opinion expressed by the top officials of the state. It consisted in the fact that it is important to give subscribers the very possibility of MNP, regardless of the potential number of users of this service.
In other words, MNP in Russia can be finalized and implemented in full thanks to the next manifestation of "political will". In 2018, a landmark event is planned on the political arena in Russia, and it is possible that in the near future the authorities will "remember" about the final closure of the issue of "mobile slavery."
It is worth noting that for three and a half years the number of applications for the MNP service exceeded 11.5 million (more than 6.9 million numbers were transferred), so MNP may be a niche service, but to say that absolutely no one needs it - incorrect. I would venture to suggest that if MNP was implemented in Russia in a full-fledged format, there would be significantly more people who want to change the mobile operator, but keep the phone number.
