Mobile Number Portability (MNP) in India

Mobile Number Portabiblity (MNP) is going to be introduced in India in December 2010 after prolonged delays. MNP is a service by which the customer will be able to retain his number (MSISDN) even after changing his

subscription from one operator/service provider to other. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)released the MNP regulations on 23 September 2009, though it initiated the MNP introduction procedures as early as July 2005 with the release of consultation papers.

History of MNP

One of the earliest implemetations of number portability was for landline phones in Hong Kong in 1996, introduced as a tool for reversal of franchised monopoly, which was a government policy. In the USA number portability was introduced in 1998 to increase competition in a highly monopolised landline phone market. The idea porting of landline numbers, known as Local number portability was 'ported' to mobile phone networks under the nomenclature MNP. In 1999, Hong Kong (again!) became one of the earliest countries to introduce MNP.

Procedures for porting your number

The procedures mentioned is this section is as per TRAI guidelines as of December 2010, and is subject to change as and when TRAI wishes.

TRAI has specified the procedures for porting a number from one operator to other. It starts when you fall for a really cool tariff plan (like DoCoMo's 1 Ps/sec plan) or a sweeping ad campaign (like Vodafone Zoozoos). Or may be your new house or office area is not covered well by your present operator. You now want to change your operator but you want to keep the number, may be because it is a well circulated number in your business circles or may be you simply love your number because it 'rhymes' with your girlfriend's number.

You initiate the procedures by making a written request to the operator to whom you wish to port (Recipient operator). You need to clear off all dues with your present operator. If you have a prepaid number you don't have to worry about clearing dues; your balance will be forfeited. Your written request form shall be accompanied with all necessary identification documents and your last bill, if you are a postpaid subscriber. The recipient operator will then verify the documents and if found satisfactory will ask you to send an SMS to some short code towards your present operator (Donor operator). You will get an automated reply back with a unique porting code. You need to add this code in your porting request form. You need to pay some porting charges which won't exceed Rs.19. The recipient operator now will intimate the MNP service provider (managers of the central MNP database. Telstra and Syniverese are the MNP service providers in India.) about the request within 24 hours. They will check the eligibility for porting (90 days of active period in the present network and absence of pending porting requests), after which it will intimate the donor operator of the porting request. The donor will assess the request and if found valid will intimate the MNP service provider of the same within 24 hours. Now the latter will complete the porting procedures within 36 hours. The recipient operator will let you know when the porting will be finished. When the intimated time arrives, the MNP service provider will ask the donor operator for disconnection and within 1 hour will ask the recipient operator to start services for the ported number. There, you have now successfully ported from one operator to other. Very simple, eh? :P

Call flow of a ported number

There are several ways to implement MNP. In India, it is done by a horizontal approach using a central database as against a vertical approach which is accomplished by changes in protocol layers.

The backbone of the horizontal approach is a standalone Number Portability Gateway (NPG), a central database which carries the Local Routing Number (LRN) of all mobile subscribers in the country. The LRN is a 4-digit unique number which represents a particular network. For example if the LRN of Mumbai MTNL is 1234, all mobile subscribers of it will have the LRN 1234, irrespective of the porting status of the number. In other words, if a mobile number gets ported, the call routing is accomplished by changing it's LRN to that of the recipient operator.

I will illustrate this with an example. Let's consider a random fictional guy: plumber Mukesh Ambany with the mobile number 9999100100. He is using Reliance GSM network in Mumbai which let's say it has the LRN 5678. Now he wants to change his subscription to MTNL (LRN=1234) because of any of the reasons I cited above, or may be because he has some differences with his brother in allowing mutual competition and selling of shares before offering to each other, whatever that means. Anyway currently whenever another random guy called Anil make calls to him (or anybody for that matter), the call is diverted from the Mobile Switching Center (MSC, telephone exchange for mobile phones) to a STP (Signalling Transfer Point) which has LRN database of all mobile subscribers. Please note that this STP, managed by individual operators (Anil's operator, in this case) periodically updates the database with that at the NPG. The STP will attach the LRN (5678) ahead of Mukesh's 10-digit mobile number and send the digits 56789999100100 back to the MSC. The MSC then routes the call to the network corresponding to the digits 5678, that is to Mumbai Reliance GSM. Please note that pre-MNP implementation, the digits are routed according to the digits 9999, which corresponds to Mumbai Reliance GSM. After MNP is implemented, it will be impossible to say so, because his number will still be 9999100100, but he may be using some other network. After Mukesh has ported his number to Mumbai MTNL, the LRN for his number changes to 1234 (LRN of Mumbai MTNL) at the NPG and subsequently in all STPs. Now when Anil makes the call the STP returns the number 12349999100100 to the MSC. The MSC now routes the call to Mumbai MTNL corresponding to the digits 1234. The call now reaches Mukesh, he cuts the call with a smirk, Anil hears the "yeh MTNL number vyasth hai" announcement instead of a Reliance announcement and he goes WTF.

Scope of MNP in India

I will do a point-wise approach in this section.

The fors:

1. The subscriber gets to change his operator without changing his number, which may be important to him.

2. There is scope for more even competition at the market, because operators will have to satisfy the subscribers so that they won't leak out. The statistical figures of MNP may have to be made public, which will expose the operators whom the subscribers are deserting and that won't be a good advertisement.

3. A trivial one. MNP is implemented in a large number of countries and India, the world's fastest growing market of mobile phones will be left out of the league if MNP is not implemented.

The againsts:

1. MNP implementation and testing are very cumbersome exercises, especially in India with over 300 operators spread in 23 telecom circles. The operators are forced to spend a hell lot of time, dough and manpower (which could be used for better QoS instead) for implementing this regulatory necessity. For the mammoth testing exercise held in September-October 2010 which lasted more than a month, each operator had to test call and SMS to all other operators in India.

2. Its not possible to port a number to a operator in another circle. While that decision makes sense, because that would complicate call routing and billing, for people changing their numbers when they travel to other cities for long duration, MNP is totally useless.

3. MNP's impact has been minimal in most of the countries. According to a report in Voice n Data, "Around the world, MNP has been a mixed bag of success and failure... While it has worked in markets like Hong Kong and Australia, it failed to bear fruit in the UK, France, Germany, Pakistan, Ireland, Malta, among others." A ZDNet report however states that Vodafone Australia claims mobile number portability to be a regulator-driven failure that cost his company AU$50 million. "We spent $50 million putting it in place and no-one is using it", says Vodafone Australia's managing director, Grahame Maher. However the rival Australian operators Telstra and Optus seemed to be happy about it, claiming customer gains, but failing to give figures on customer gains and leakages. According to a report by Telecom Asia, a study by UK-based research firm Analysys concluded that MNP has failed to take off in most parts of the world despite its important role as an "enabler of open competition." A Top Tech News report cites Analysys stating that MNP has largely failed in most countries that have implemented it. As per their studies, in most countries in which MNP is implemented, even 10% of the subscribers did not use it. The key culprits, according to Analysys, are the high charges involved with transferring numbers, long delays in the process, and a sheer lack of awareness that MNP is available.

4. I would analyse the key causes of MNP failure as found by Analysys: The high charges involved with transferring numbers, long delays in the process, and a sheer lack of awareness that MNP is available.

a. High charges: In India the charges for porting will not exceed Rs.19, as per a directive from TRAI. But in Haryana, the first circle in India to implement MNP, the directive is already being twisted by charging Rs.10 for the porting validation SMS to the number 1900. While its not too much of an amount, especially considering the early proposed charge of Rs.300 the hidden charges will scare away the customers.

b. Delays: The porting delay is expected to be at most 84 hours in India, as per the directive, which itself is too much of time, considering the porting time in other countries: 2 hours only in USA, as low as 20 minutes in the Republic of Ireland, 3 minutes in Australia and even a matter of seconds in New Zealand.

c. Lack of awareness: As per a survey by Nielsen India, 18% of Indian mobile customers said that they would change their operator if they have the ability to retain their number. A quarter of Reliance and Tata said they would change their operator post-MNP. That’s huge.

The important fact however is that 17% of all Indian mobile customers were planning to change their operator pre-MNP itself. (Refer to the comparison chart) That means an increased interest of just 1%. The 17% people would very well throw away their current SIM and get another one of their preference, like they have been doing before MNP rollout. This is another factor. How many people love their number so much that they would prefer to go through the lengthy porting procedure instead of getting a new SIM and letting others know of the new number by SMS or something? As far as publicity is concerned, MNP has been in news for quite some time due to the lengthy and often postponed rollout procedure; so many people already should have heard of it. Idea has already started airing ads on MNP asking people to "switch to Idea", making it to look like a service they are offering. BSNL went one step ahead by offering stuff like free talktime to people porting in. Good strategy, I'd say. But speaking of the MNP scenario in the USA, Analysys states that "most top tier carriers hopped on the MNP advertising bandwagon when the concept was first introduced in 2003 but hopped back off almost as quickly. Since advertising the MNP option didn't make a major impact on consumers' decisions to port their numbers most carriers decided they would rather spend their budget advertising new phones and price plans." That is exactly what is going to happen in India too.

Obviously the cons outweigh the pros. I have been working closely with an operator for MNP implementation and testing, and I have to say that the time, money and manpower spent on MNP is not worth it. TRAI should have done enough feasibility studies to understand the massive effort the whole rollout would require in a unique case like India with about 300 operators spread in 23 circles and the possible impact of the service. I'd like to wind this up with a quote by Colonel (retd), S. N. Aggarwal, a Delhibased consumer activist. "MNP is going to be a mess. There is absolutely no coordination between TRAI and the operators."

Inception: Hype and its Impact on Box-Office

Ever since Inception was announced, the film circles were abuzz with news of anything from release date to probable plots. The collaboration of the director of The Dark Knight and one of the biggest stars of Hollywood was of course destined to be hyped. The release date nears and the hype is building up exponentially propelled by the largely favourable reviews and media promotions. The Dark Knight too witnessed huge hype in the run-down to its release. We know that was due to the promos focusing on The Joker played by the talented Heath Ledger, whose unexpected demise had grabbed headlines. While it is certain that The Dark Knight would still have become a blockbuster had Ledger survived that drug overdose, it is doubtful if it would have bagged the record $158 million in the opening weekend. Before the release of Iron Man 2, a Yahoo report wondered if it would dethrone The Dark Knight from the opening weekend gross record, considering the huge hype. It ended up trailing a whole $30 million.

What make me somewhat nervous about the insane hype around Inception are its uncommon genre and the fact that it's not belonging to a pre-established premise like The Dark Knight or Iron Man 2 for that matter. The global box-office phenomenon Avatar pretty much negates the latter point. I had quoted the same reason and “optimistically" projected Avatar to gross up to $1 billion globally, hoping the 3D and favourable reviews will somehow push the film up to that. That one apparently will end up grossing almost thrice as much. But Avatar is an exception, and a huge one at that. As of 11 July 2010, Avatar's total gross is $2.73 billion, out of which only $750 million is collected domestically. In other words, a whopping 72% of the gross was collected from foreign territories. Even though the foreign collection share is very high, it’s not uncommon for blockbusters to collect more from foreign territories. In fact all Top 20 global blockbusters have collected more from foreign screens; all but one. The Dark Knight, with 53% domestic share is the one which is out of the league. Obviously the deeper we go into a comparative analysis between The Dark Knight, Avatar and Inception, the more it gets complex. To put it straight, Avatar with a huge hype and a non-established premise went on to collect in normal blockbuster pattern with a fatter foreign share. The Dark Knight with more hype and established premise ended up collecting more domestically.

The hype of Inception might not be as huge as The Dark Knight, but it is comparable to that of Avatar. The problem here, as I mentioned above is that the premise is not only unfamiliar to the audience, it seems to be a bit convoluted too. The first Inception review to get published stated that we, the audience are so used to being treated like idiots; which means that Inception is a film which makes you think. You won’t see many "brainy" movies with non-established premises in the top of the blockbusters table. I remember one report jokingly describing Inception as a weirdo/sci-fi/heist/thriller film. IMDb describes it as a drama/mystery/sci-fi/thriller. The amalgamated genre outcome may very well end up being unappealing on incomprehensible for the general public. That’s why I'm wary of the hype. The hype would help the film to gross around $70 million domestically in the opening weekend, but if the general public goes to the film expecting an action/thriller film as indicated by the TV spots, things may get bad in the second week. It would have been much better if they gave stress to the drama part as well. And I hope the film don’t end up looking so geeky to the common audience. I will of course be very happy to find myself proven too pessimistic in this matter after two weeks. Let's hope the audience will reward a director who trusts their intelligence.

Inception opens on 16 July 2010.

More info on Inception from Wikipedia.

Visit the Official Website.

Play the official Inception mind crime game.

The Grand Theft Auto (GTA) Series Trivia

I had compiled this as a mail to friends in December 2006, and just came across it again now. I thought I'd share it. I have not edited it with new sales figures and GTA IV is not even considered until the very end. Despite that, it chronicles the importance and impact of the GTA series in video

games sphere. The below facts will surely enthuse hardcore gamers...not sure about others, but they might find the 14 th point rather interesting!!!

1.

GTA franchise is the 6th highest selling game series of all time, after Mario (193 million), Pokémon (155 million),Final Fantasy (68 million),The Sims (54 million) and Madden NFL (51 million). The Grand Theft Auto series has sold 50 million games.

2.

Debuting Years:Mario (1981), Pokémon (1995),Final Fantasy (1987),The Sims (1989),Madden NFL (1984),Grand Theft Auto (1998)

No. of games in the series:Mario (130), Pokémon (493),Final Fantasy (12),The Sims (27),Madden NFL (20),Grand Theft Auto (6 with 4 'add-on's)

Considering the above facts, GTA series has the highest sales per game of all time. And the vast majority of the sales are for GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas.

3.

Individually, the top-seeling games of all times are shown below:

i. Super Mario Bros. 3 (18 million)

ii. Super Mario Land (14 million)

iii. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (13 million)

iv. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (12 million)

v. Grand Theft Auto III (11 million)

vi.Super Mario 64 (11 million)

vii.Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec (11 million)

Note that the 3,4 & 5 positions are for the GTA games.

4.

The San Andreas sales figure of 12 million has been recorded within 6 months of its release, making it the one to get the highest initial sales.

5.

In the Sony PlayStation2 platform, the 3 highest selling games are San Andreas, Vice City & GTA III respectively!

6.

The games in the GTA family are:

Grand Theft Auto

a. Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969

b. Grand Theft Auto: London, 1961

Grand Theft Auto 2

Grand Theft Auto III

a. Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City

a. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Grand Theft Auto Advance

7.

The hero of GTA III had no name. Infact he never uttered a single word throughout the game. But at the ending of San Andreas, it is revealed that the GTA III hero’s first name is Claude! Interestingly, the hero of GTA 2 has the name Claude Speed!

8.

The difference that made the GTA series click is the freedom that it offers gamers to choose their mission (or even not to choose!). GTA III combined the sand-box style and open-world style of gaming. The GTA gameplay was replicated by atleast 20 game series that released after the success of it.

9.

The fictinal cities in the GTA series are actually inspired from some American Cities:

Liberty City: New York

Vice City: Miami

San Andras: Yeah, you guessed it right…San Francisco.

10.

GTA San Andreos stars Carl CJ Johnson, an African-American... making it the first game of its sort to star a black man. Also, like the previous two GTA games, San Andreas's voice actors includes notable celebrities, including Charlie Murphy, Samuel L. Jackson, James Woods, Peter Fonda, Frank Vincent, the late Chris Penn, rappers Ice T, Chuck D and The Game and musicians Axl Rose and Shaun Ryder.

11.

The hero of the GTA series couldn't swim. When he falls to water he just sinks and GAME OVER! But that problem was solved in San Andreos, where he was gifted with the ability to swim.

12.

The GTA series was under fire since the launch of GTA III because of its violent nature. GTA III and Vice City has pending lawsuits in the US courts. The major criticism was on the focus of illegal activities in the game compared to the good-man heros of other usual games. The main character can commit a wide variety of crimes and violent acts while dealing with only temporary consequences, including the killing of policemen and military personnel. Opponents believe that players will try to emulate this behavior.

On October 20, 2003, the families of Aaron Hamel and Kimberly Bede, two young people shot by teens William and Josh Buckner (who in statements to investigators claimed their actions were inspired by GTA III) filed a US$246 million lawsuit against publishers Rockstar Games and Take-Two Interactive Software, retailer Wal-Mart, and PlayStation 2 manufacturer Sony Computer Entertainment America. The lawsuit was dismissed later.

13.

Another criticism was on racial abuses in some parts of the games. Dialogoues like"These Haitians! We take 'em out!" and missions to kill immigrants from Haiti and Cuba landed the Vice City in fire.

14.

A factor that the gamers of GTA notice is the excess of nudity and sex. In GTA III the hero could take prostitutes to his car and after some intended sex, increase his health upto 125 points, which stops at 100 otherwise! The girl will take money from you but you can get it back by killing her! A bit brutal, isn’t it? Because of some problem with the Australian game censorship board, this feature was disabled in the Australian version! The biggest of all fuck-ups (as per the GTA language) was the San Andreas ‘Hot Cofee’ controversy. At one point of the game, one girl invites Carl CJ Johnson, the hero for a ‘hot coffee’ to her house. The game actually had some intended sex between the two with swivelled camera motion from ouside the house and some ‘ooh..aah’s. But after installing a unofficial add-on patch, the player actually can go into the house and have ….you know what! It actually acted like a mini-game with crude graphics. The gamer really has controls and the ‘mission’ is to keep the ‘excitement level’ of the girl to the max! It is debated that the ‘hot coffee code’ was actually there in the game package and the patch just opens it up!

The ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp ) news about the controversy.

Below are the links to the GTA trailers:

GTA III:

GTA Vice City:

GTA San Andreas:

NB: The next game in the series, GTA IV released in April 2008. True to the heritage of the series, the title also was a smash-hit. As of May 2010, it is the Guinness World Records holder of "Highest grossing video game in 24 hours" and "Highest Revenue Generated by an Entertainment Product in 24 Hours" titles.

More info on the series:

Wikipedia page

Rockstar Games

Taxi Driver (1976) & There Will Be Blood (2007):

A Comparative Study

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis): I.. drink.. your.. milkshake!

Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro): You talkin to me? You talkin to me?

I got to watch these two fine pieces of cinema last weekend. And I felt both have a few major aspects in common, other than them being products of fine celluloid craftsmanship. Firstly, both of them are deep character studies in general and the narration of the plot takes a back seat. Not that the premise is irrelevant, they surely help in shaping up the character. The dark streets of New York in the 1970s and oil rigs of California in the early 1900s have shades of gloom and filth splattered over. There are moments of cheer, but they are few. The films get darker as the story progresses. Both films are blessed with superlative performances by the lead stars. Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) and Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) are not exactly full of admiration for the people around them. While Bickle wishes somebody could flush the city "down the fuckin toilet", Plainview declares he sees the “worst in people”.

There is however something inherently different about the two guys. Bickle's hatred is built on his experiences, which might even have contributed to his psychological issues. He even wants to correct the world around him. Plainview on the other hand, built up his hatred so as to succeed, for not letting anyone else to win. That makes him downright evil; much, much more evil than Bickle. Add to that his short-temper that and in Plainview we have one of the most dislikeable lead characters ever. Plainview is as unpredictable as Bickle, but is not as stupid or bizarre as him. He won't take a girl to a sex education movie on a date or attempt to assassinate a senator wearing a very distinguishable Mohawk hairdo.

Another interesting aspect would be the people they care for. Bickle develops kind of a paternal affection to a teenage prostitute he sees on street and is hell bent on liberating her. He eventually succeeds in it too. Plainview on the other hand has his adopted son, who thinks Plainview is his real father. He is perhaps the only person Plainview loved. Yeah, past tense. As soon as his son's intentions to start his own company are clear, he starts to hate him too calling him a "bastard for a basket".

The murders they commit are also curiously reflective of their persona. Bickle shoots his way to the prostitute who he wants to save, utilising every move he had been rehearsing in front of mirrors. Cool heroic stuff, even though the whole exercise almost gets him killed. But that he is just back after attempting to assassinate a senator, who seems quite a decent man doesn’t go well with that heroic image. He is “a walking contradiction”. Plainview’s murders on the other hand were not necessary at all. He killed people who were entirely surrendered to him. In situations where most others would have been mellowed, he is enraged like hell and mercy is not something he is familiar of. This man is pure evil.

I think it’s now clear that I am more intrigued by Plainview than Bickle. I also think Daniel Day-Lewis belted out a more superior performance than Robert De Niro. But then this is me. Comprehensive character driven dramas like these can have a thousand interpretations and can garner a million conflicting opinions.

Taxi Driver

Directed by Martin Scorsese

Written by Paul Schrader

Distributed by Columbia Pictures

Release date: February 8, 1976

Wikipedia article

There Will Be Blood

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson

Written by Paul Thomas Anderson

Distributed by Paramount Vantage

Release date: December 26, 2007

Wikipedia article

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

I still have not stopped scratching my head. I dozed off three times while watching the film. I watched it yesterday night and all this time I can't stop thinking about it. Damn, I even had dreams on it! Kubrick has made a glorious example of self-indulgent film making. The starting itself with prolonged idle shots of a prehistoric desert, he makes it amply clear that he is gonna take his own bloody time to tell what he got to say. The story is told in 4 phases and in each but one, a mysterious big black tablet appears supposedly due to some extra-terrestrial activity. In the first chapter, it is told how the tablet might have influenced human's thinking capabilities. The chapter named 'the dawn of man' is the story of ape men starting to use tools. Though the entire story is revolving around this tablet, nothing much is revealed on it other than that it has a huge magnetic field and that it sent a wave of radiation towards Jupiter. The third chapter on the expedition to Jupiter is the most interesting one, when an artificial intelligence computer on board the mission ship encounters a clash of interest with the astronauts. This film was made in 1968 and the kind of imagination that went into the making of this film is amusing. There are elaborate sequences on activities of and in space ships, with support from extensive sets and camera tricks which has to be revolutionary at the film's time. I think many later space films have taken cues from 2001 on various aspects of space life as well as filming techniques. The 'characterization' of the AI computer nicknamed HAL is the highlight of this film for me. The use of classic music gives an all different feel to scenes featuring space ships. There is a prolonged sequence of some photo active phenomenon that an astronaut goes through when he nears the surface of Jupiter. Only God and Kubrick knows what happened at the climax, and I'm not so sure about the former. Certainly, this film is not everyone's cup of tea, but if you are into serious cinema and want to experience what a director in command do to you with ambiguous imagery, they go witness the Odyssey.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Directed by Stanley Kubrick

Produced by Stanley Kubrick

Written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke

Distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Release date: April 6, 1968

Details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)

About the master director: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Kubrick