Mobile number porting trebles in August

New Zealand’s Telecommunications Carriers’ Forum (TCF) has announced that 15,500 mobile numbers were ported during August 2009, three times more than the previous month’s total. The rise follows the 6 August launch of the third national mobile operator 2degrees, and shortly after the deployment of 3.5G technology across Vodafone and Telecom Mobile’s rival networks. Richard Westlake, Chair of TCF, said: ‘August 2009 will be known as the month that we threw out the record books… Several new mobile services are being offered by existing companies, which is great news for consumers because it means competitive pricing, but it’s also good for industry, since it means New Zealand’s market for mobile services is still open in spite of the recession.’ Approximately 12,000 local access numbers were also ported in the month. There are now over 250,000 ported numbers in New Zealand, a total which could rise to above 300,000 by the end of the year. Mr Westlake added: ‘I would also like to acknowledge two of our members, Telecom and Vodafone, who stepped in to help with the sudden increase in volumes by offering other providers manual workarounds allowing mobile ports to occur seamlessly, without impacting on customers.’