Seef District, Kingdom of Bahrain – Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has been continuously supporting and improving number portability in the Kingdom of Bahrain since the facility’s introduction in July2011. From then, residents in the Kingdom have been enjoying the flexibility of transferring their personal numbers freely between telecoms service providers.
TRA shared its latest statistics with the public concerning number portability for the first half of 2017. “The number of accepted mobile numbers ported reached 11,643 ( compared to 29,567 in the first half of 2016) a significantly large reduction in Number Portability transactions. Whereas 1,976 were rejected (compared to 7,032 in the first half of 2016).” Says TRA Manager of Information & Communication Technology, Sh. Ahmed bin Isa bin Duaij Al Khalifa. “The successful number of fixed line port requests reached 617 (compared to 694 in 2016) whereas 274 were rejected (compared to 167 in 2016). In total, 251,173 numbers in the telecom market were ported since the start of Number Portability in July 2011, and the average time to port mobile numbers in June 2017 was 23 minutes on average.” He added.
Sh. Ahmed also stated that “The reasons some port requests were rejected were due to several factors which mainly include CPR numbers not matching the original operator which the subscriber’s CPR number is associated with, the number being out of service, the subscriber having bad debt, or the Commercial Registration number provided not matching the same number registered with the original operator where the phone number was acquired.”
TRA would like to inform consumers that the best time to submit a porting request is during official work hours (Sun-Thursday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM) and this is due to the allowed porting window. In case the porting requests are not sent during working days or business hours, this will affect the time taken to process the porting request as the actual transfer of the number will be executed during the work hours only. Consumers should also be aware of when the billing cycle of their subscription occurs, as it is highly recommended that Consumers submit their requests two days prior to the end of their cycle in order to avoid double billing from both operators.
About TRA
Since its establishment in 2002, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) of the Kingdom of Bahrain has been working with government, consumers, operators and investors to develop the country into the region’s most modern communications hub and to facilitate the growth of the market. As an exemplary Regulator for the region, TRA Bahrain independently carries out its duties in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner. More information about TRA can be viewed at www.tra.org.bh.
For Press inquiries and information please contact the media department on tramedia@tra.org.bh
© Press Release 2017
