Its a very difficult situation when you change your mobile  number often because you just relocated to some other state. You need to message or email your new number to all your contacts and takes a while to remember your own new number. And also spend some amount on taking a new number.

Even though roaming charges have slashed in India, its quite uneasy to talk when the incoming call is charged and the SMS rates are high on roaming.

All these problems will soon come to an end because TRAI is setting up regulations for MOBILE NUMBER PORTABILITY,i.e. you will soon be able to use the same mobile number with any operator in India. Say, when you relocate from Bangalore to Mumbai, and you have a Vodafone connection in Bangalore, you can just use the same mobile number in Mumbai with an Airtel Connection.

And the process will be made quite easy too. Just that TRAI has issued a guideline that the number will not be portable until completion 90 days with a career.  There will be charges for migrating from one career to another. The Department of Telecom (DoT) has already appointed two companies — Syniverse Technologies and MNP Interconnect — to be the MNP service provider, manage day-to-day management and implementation, and also maintain the database of all numbers.

MNP is ready to roll out on September 20th 2009 in the metros and the A category locations like Tamil Nadu, Gujarat. Rest of the country will see the MNP in March 2010.