Mo­bile and fixed line tele­phone op­er­a­tors in T&T have signed an agree­ment Port­ing XS for pro­vi­sion of ser­vice provider num­ber porta­bil­i­ty. This means cus­tomers to change their ser­vice providers with­out hav­ing to change their tele­phone num­bers.

As a re­sult of the agree­ment, the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) has set a dead­line of March 31 for im­ple­men­ta­tion of mo­bile num­ber porta­bil­i­ty while im­ple­men­ta­tion for fixed lines will take place no lat­er than Sep­tem­ber 30.

The agency em­barked on im­ple­men­ta­tion of lo­cal num­ber in 2010 with the pub­li­ca­tion of its Frame­work for the Im­ple­men­ta­tion of Num­ber Porta­bil­i­ty. Since then TATT in seek­ing to have all op­er­a­tors have their net­works suit­ably con­fig­ured to im­ple­ment num­ber porta­bil­i­ty on their fixed and mo­bile net­works.

Port­ingXS of Hol­land will pro­vide the cen­tral­ized data­base re­quired for im­ple­men­ta­tion of num­ber porta­bil­i­ty. Sign­ing of the con­tract be­tween Port­ing XS and lo­cal ser­vice providers took place re­cent­ly at TATT's of­fice, 5 Eighth Av­enue Ex­ten­sion, off Twelfth Street, Barataria.

Speak­ing at that sign­ing, Cris Seecher­an, TATT's CEO said: "I wish to take this op­por­tu­ni­ty to thank all our ser­vice providers for the tremen­dous ef­fort that they have all tak­en in the prepa­ra­tion for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of num­ber porta­bil­i­ty in T&T. I wish al­so to thank Port­ing XS for the role that they will play in the suc­cess of this ini­tia­tive that will en­hance the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence and fur­ther the com­pet­i­tive land­scape in telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in T&T."

Sign­ing on be­half of their com­pa­nies were Bri­an Collins, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, Colum­bus Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Trinidad Lim­it­ed; Fi­achra Groarke, chief op­er­a­tions of­fi­cer, Dig­i­cel (T&T) Lim­it­ed; Naris­sa Mustapha, gen­er­al man­ag­er, Lisa Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lim­it­ed; Pe­ter Gillet­tem, chair­man, Open Tele­com; Charles Carter, EVP Le­gal, Reg­u­la­to­ry, Car­ri­er Ser­vices and Cor­po­rate Sec­re­tary, TSTT; Kirk Rud­der, man­ag­er, Val­ue Added Ser­vices, Massy Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Lim­it­ed; and Ronald Vlas­man, CEO, Port­ing XS, BV.