The National Authority for Management and Regulation in Communications of Romania (ANCOM) sanctioned Telekom Romania Mobile Communications by fine amounting to RON 200,000 for failure to port 1,232 telephone numbers and delays in porting further 4,941 telephone numbers, a press release informs.
Following a series of complaints submitted both by Telekom Mobile users, and by other telephony providers, which revealed that the porting process could not be achieved or was delayed for a significant amount of numbers, ANCOM initiated a control action.
”Thus, the Authority found that during 1 May – 21 July 2017, Telekom Mobile failed to send the standard message for 7,213 porting requests, which drove to the fact that – until 21 August 2017 – the porting process had been cancelled for 1,232 single individual numbers, respectively delayed for further 4,941 single individual numbers. Having breached some provisions of the electronic communications legislation, Telekom Romania Mobile Communications was fined with RON 200,000, which the company will have to pay to the state budget,” the release reads.
During this year, ANCOM received 364 notifications from users regarding the progress of porting to various fixed or mobile networks. The main issues complained about concerned malfunctions that occurred during the porting process (such as the non-synchronization of user identification information or failure to send messages between databases), leading to extended deadlines or even to the cancellation of some porting processes.
Number portability enables the users to keep their telephone number, while switching providers. Since the launch of this service, more than 4.2 million telephone numbers have been ported, among which 3.5 million were mobile telephony numbers and approximately 700,000 – fixed telephony numbers.