The first customer who ported his MTN number to Vodafone said it took about 10 minutes for him to start using his new Vodafone SIM with his old MTN number. Michael Ackom of Osu told Adom News “after I filled the form at the Vodafone store I was asked to send a blank message to shortcode 600 - then in a one minute I got a message that my porting request was being processed - in about five minutes I got another message asking me to swap my MTN SIM for the Vodafone SIM – I did so and loaded one cedi worth of Vodafone credit and made my first call.” Vodafone promised that their automated porting system could process requests in 15 minutes, but some service providers challenge that and said the very nature of the process itself would take much longer. But Michael said in local parlance “Vodafone is quick paa because in just about 10 minutes I was using my new Vodafone chip.” Michael said he left MTN particularly because anytime he did one cedi credit transfer on MTN he only got 90 pesewas worth of credit because the vendor took a commission of 10 pesewas. He said with Vodafone and Tigo when you pay one cedi you get one cedi worth of credit. Michael said since joining Vodafone he had noticed a significant difference that he got a double bonus on his one cedi credit, which was obvious, unlike on MTN “where you are told that sometimes you spend less credit and sometimes more but you do not know exactly when more or less credit is running out.” Adom News also spoke with Geoffrey Bassey of East Legon who ported from Vodafone to MTN and said it took 10 hours before he got a message from MTN asking him to swap his Vodafone SIM for the MTN one. “I made the request at 10am and at 8pm I got the message to swap my SIM card,” he said. MTN had said their porting system was manual or at best semi-automated, which meant there are more humans working on the process so it could take long – they have promised to go fully automated by close of July. Geoff said he ported his Vodafone number to MTN because of MTN’s nationwide coverage. “I have always been in love with the code 020 and did not want to lose my Vodafone number but anytime I drove pass Adenta and got to Aburi Vodafone does not work because they do not have coverage in that area - now I can keep my favourite 020 number and get nationwide coverage on MTN,” he said. Meanwhile as at 5pm on day one the National Communication Authority reported that less than 100 porting requests had been recording across networks but the number went up to about 150 by close of day. NCA MNP Consultant, Bob Palitz said what is happening in Ghana was not different from what happened in other markets with MNP. “It always starts slowly, rises gradually and reaches a platue and then only grows as mobile subscribers increase,” he said. Kenya reportedly recorded 8,000 porting requests in two weeks, but it is not clear whether Ghana could meet or beat that record at this pace. Tigo and Airtel are equally reporting that in the midst of the relatively slow take-off they are also recording encouraging number of porting requests. Efforts to get customers who have ported from other networks to Tigo and Airtel proved futile. The only CDMA operator, Expresso, which say it has an automated MNP system and promises to absorb porting cost for customers are mute on transactions. Porting to Expresso means the customer must either purchase a new CDMA handset or get one for free from Expresso. Story by: Samuel Nii Narku Dowuona/Adom News/Ghana