The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty al­so an­nounced last week that mo­bile to mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty would start in T&T on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2015 and that fixed to mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty would start on May 1, 2015.

Num­ber porta­bil­i­ty is the abil­i­ty of a cus­tomer to re­tain the same tele­phone num­ber when they change their tele­phone provider. the tele­com reg­u­la­tor said that the in­ter­con­nec­tion reg­u­la­tions re­quires con­ces­sion­aires to "con­fig­ure its net­work to fa­cil­i­tate num­ber porta­bil­i­ty be­tween sim­i­lar net­works, as and when di­rect­ed by the au­thor­i­ty."

TATT said that it pub­lished a pol­i­cy doc­u­ment on the is­sue on Sep­tem­ber 30, 2012 and on Jan­u­ary 15, 2013 it start­ed meet­ing all op­er­a­tors who are re­quired to im­ple­ment num­ber porta­bil­i­ty. The op­er­a­tors are Colom­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Dig­i­cel, Lisa Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Open Tele­com, TSTT and Three Six­ty Com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

"The au­thor­i­ty re­quired that each said op­er­a­tor con­duct an as­sess­ment of its state of readi­ness so as to de­duce the most ap­pro­pri­ate date of com­mence­ment for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of mo­bile to mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty and fixed to mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty," said the an­nounce­ment.The no­tice on num­ber porta­bil­i­ty came in a "de­ter­mi­na­tion that is bind­ing up­on all op­er­a­tors so re­quired by the au­thor­i­ty to im­ple­ment num­ber porta­bil­i­ty."

Ac­cord­ing to the doc­u­ment, the de­ter­mi­na­tion takes ef­fect on the day that it is pub­lished.The de­ter­mi­na­tion was signed by TATT chair­man Sel­by Wil­son on Ju­ly 31 but was post­ed on the reg­u­la­tor's Web site on Thurs­day.