KINGSTON, Jamaica, Monday June 22, 2015 – It’s official. After being promised it would happen almost two years ago, Jamaicans can now change landline and mobile phone providers and hold on to their telephone numbers.
Local Number Portability (LNP) was rolled out today, after Minister of Science, Technology, Energy and Mining Phillip Paulwell announced over the weekend that all systems were in place to make it a reality.
“It is with a sense of relief and satisfaction that I have received official notification that the tedious process of facilitating number portability has been successfully completed and the Jamaican consumers can now change from one telecommunications service provider to another and retain his/her original number,” he said.
The implementation of number portability had been pushed back five times since it was to take effect on December 2012.
The latest delay had been earlier this month when telecommunications company LIME had requested and was granted an 18-day extension to get its infrastructure working properly. Paulwell said at the time that the extension would allow for “critical tests to ensure optimum performance and prevent any calamitous system failure that would negatively impact the entire service, impede the porting process, and erode consumer satisfaction and confidence”.
With the announcement of the LNP roll-out of, however, he cautioned that there could still be some hiccups.
“The greatest test is the successful implementation of each request and ultimately the satisfaction of the consumer. Like all new systems of this magnitude, there may be minor glitches, but our expectation is that if and when there is such an occurrence that this will be addressed expeditiously and at a minimal inconvenience to the consumer,” the minister said.
Number portability will initially only be facilitated from mobile to mobile and fixed line to fixed line, but Paulwell said that would eventually change.
Netherlands-based Porting Access B.V has the Number Portability Administrator licence, which is valid for 10 years, to establish, operate, manage, coordinate and maintain a number portability central reference database in Jamaica.
