The launch date for the Mobile Number Portability (MNP) has been postponed from July 1 to July 7, 2011. This was because Friday July 1 is a public holiday and the two days after that are also non-working days. The National Communication Authority (NCA) said the other reason for the postponement was because the law that would govern the MNP is due to be passed in Parliament on July 6, 2011. Adom News is reliably informed that even though telecom operators and Porting Access have 24 hours within which to complete a porting process, the law would require that porting be done within a maximum of four hours. Meanwhile the telecom operators are on the last lap of doing porting test among themselves and they still report that porting is being done within less than 10 minutes in some cases. The operators told Adom News in separate interviews they are more than ready for MNP as of today and some even said they had been ready about a week ago when changes were made in the interconnect to accommodate routing of calls involving ported numbers. Part of that process allowed them to migrate live traffic onto their various routing platforms and they have reported that was successful. Meanwhile the operators are gearing up to do massive public education on MNP in the coming days, as SIM card registration date has been extended 90 more days. The operators had said that SIM card registration was in the way of MNP public education but now no more. MNP Consultant for Vodafone Ghana, James Wild told Adom News Vodafone would in the next few hours launch a new MNP menu on its website just to educate people on MNP. He said in the coming days the company would also rebrand its customer service shops to reflect MNP, adding that there would also be MNP materials available at the shops for customers and prospective customers to pick and read. Acting Chief Marketing Officer at MTN Ghana, Clement Ofori Asante said MTN would roll out a series of activities and materials to educate the public on MNP in the coming days, adding that already MTN had published a Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) on MNP on its website. Head of Corporate Communications at Airtel Ghana, Donald Gwira said Airtel had also published a FAQ on MNP both on its website and in some major newspapers as part of MNP public education, adding that in the coming days more would be done in that direction. Head of Media and Advertising at Tigo Ghana, Enoch Vanderpuye also told Adom News SIM card registration took the attention of the company but now that it had been extended, Tigo would soon roll out MNP materials and massive public education campaign. Even though Expresso, formerly Kasapa, was one of the first companies to start championing MNP years ago, the company had been silent about MNP since the process towards its launch begun. But Adom News is reliably informed that Expresso has been one of the most cooperative operators during the preparations towards the launch and the company is one of four operators with automated MNP systems. Globacom also declared their support for MNP years back and had been part of preparations towards the launch but very much silent on MNP. Story by: Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana