| dc.description.abstract | In the telecommunications industry, mobile numbers are increasingly being seen as an asset of the regulator. The freedom
of the customer using it is left to him/her to decide which service provider to use while retaining the same number.
Mobile number portability (MNP) has been introduced to provide a platform for this freedom to the customer. The
Telecommunications market Regulator in Kenya, the Communication Commission of Kenya (CCK), began the course
of mobile number portability in 2010 through newspaper advertisement. The regulator had an aim that in the end, the
right customer experience will be provided by the service providers, and help service providers to build profitable and
lasting relationships between the service providers and their customer, and to differentiate themselves in the market. In
this paper, we seek to evaluate the performance of MNP in Kenya since its launch. This paper seeks to find out how the
service has performed after the first three months of operation. We survey and analyze MNP framework in Kenya and
compare that to MNP in Japan, Finland, Sweden and Hong Kong to establish the future of MNP in Kenya. It first looks
at the MNP framework as used in Kenya and the procedure for reversal in case the customer is dissatisfied with a service
provider who moves to and makes a reference to how the service has performed in other markets such as Finland,
Sweden, and Hong Kong in order to enable comparative observations. Since there has been very little literature published
for countries in Africa, it will only make comments on countries like Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria. Further, it
gives recommendations to the participating parties. | en_US |
