Mobile Number Portability in Ghana: A Paradigm Shift from the Past

Although cellular communications have existed in Ghana, West Africa, since 1992, it was not until July 7, 2011 that mobile phone number porting took off. Thus for the almost 20 years that cellular services existed without number porting, subscribers in Ghana endured the inconvenience of having to change their numbers entirely anytime they felt dissatisfied with the services of any telecommunications company (Telco) and wanted to switch to another network. However, to increase competition among the networks and hence precipitate improvements in services delivery, the government of Ghana decided to embark on number porting as a way of checking the otherwise unsatisfactory performances of the various networks. Ghana currently has six mobile phone network providers who all operate on GSM except one which has deployed CDMA. The six networks are Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN), Airtel, Tigo, Vodafone Ghana, Glo Mobile, and Expresso. In this research paper, we report on some of the vital statistics as reported by the country’s communications authority 20 months into the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) in Ghana