The telecoms operators have said they are unable to concentrate on educating the public about Mobile Number Portability whiles grappling with millions of unregistered SIM cards six days to the June 30 deadline. Speaking on behalf of the telecoms operators, Chief Executive of Ghana Telecoms Chamber (GTC), Kwaku Sakyi-Addo told Adom News operators were more concerned with getting their unregistered customers registered before the June 30 deadline. He said there was no deadline on when people can port their numbers after the July 1, 2011 MNP launch, so there was no rush in educating subscribers about MNP, particularly when millions of those subscribers were yet to even register their SIM cards. “You need to register your SIM card before you can port your number if you want to, so we must deal with that first and then operators will roll out their public education campaign on MNP,” he said. SIM card registration begun June last year and was billed to finish June 30 this year, but verification report released by the NCA this month indicated some five million plus subscribers, representing 30 per cent of all registered SIM cards had errors in their registration details so their registration were deemed invalid. There is currently a cleanup exercise to correct the anomalies for those subscribers, alongside new registrations. The telecoms operators and some civil society organizations have called for extension of the registration period but the NCA has not yet agreed to extend. This means the directive to operators to deactivate all unregistered numbers, including those which could not be verified still stands. Kwaku Sakyi-Addo said the telecoms operators could not combine MNP public education with the huge nightmare of possibly having to disconnect valuable customers in the next six days. Some of the operators who spoke to Adom News on grounds of anonymity noted that the NCA was pushing the industry to chew more than it could swallow by pegging the disconnection of unregistered SIM cards and the take off of MNP on the same day. Others also said the operators have been paying huge moneys to the NCA for the purposes of public education and other industry-related activities so the NCA had the sole duty of doing the huge MNP public education campaign expected of the industry by now. One operator said “instead of using our resources to tell our customers how they can port out of our network, we will rather invest into helping our existing customers register their SIMs with us and stay on our network.” But at least two operators have confirmed they will start a huge MNP public education campaign from next week. SIM Card registration will end on June 30, 2011 and MNP will take of the next day, July 1, 2011, which is a public holiday in Ghana. A small random sampling conducted by Adom News among 100 people indicated that many respondents are still oblivious about MNP with the explanation that their networks are not telling them anything about it. All the results are not yet in, but what has been received so far indicate most respondents are not sure if they want to port but those who said they will port, said they would opt for either Vodafone or Airtel, The main push-out reasons are poor network quality and high tariffs, while the pull-in factors are low tariffs and just the desire to explore. Story by Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana