NEW DELHI, INDIA: India's Telecom regulator TRAI unveiled on Tuesday the draft regulations for the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP), which allows consumers to change their telecom operator without changing their phone number.

The draft regulations describe the rights, obligations and duties of both the telecom operators (donor and recipient) for the "porting" (changing) of mobile number, TRAI said in a statement.

According to the draft regulations, new mobile users will be permitted to change their operators only after 90 days of signing up with their first service provider. It has also recommended that after changing their operator, consumers need to stay with the new telco for a minimum of 90 days.

The government had earlier announced that it would kick off MNP in metros and some states on September 20.

TRAI has proposed that the customers give a written undertaking to their existing service provider for switching to a new operator, which will then have to carry out all checks, including identity verification, before the process can be completed. The process must be completed within five days, said TRAI.

Of course, the customer has to pay a fee to change their operators, said TRAI. This would be specified later after consultations with both the industry and consumer bodies.

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.

Meanwhile, the DoT is is considering an 11-digit numbering system from next year and to give permission to mobile companies to issue cell phone numbers beginning with 8, as the Department has exhausted cell phone numbers beginning with 9.

The DoT is reportedly planning to introduce 10 crore new numbers beginning with “8 ” and it will reserve nearly 50 of the new numbers for itself, while the remaining will be distributed among telecom providers.