TNI Bureau: Good news for mobile users, who are frequently travelling out of states. The Union Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal said that the nationwide Mobile Number Portability (MNP) will be rolled out by February 2013. The MNP will allow mobile users to retain their numbers even in different state and other telecom circle.

Sibal said that the processing will be completed by February next year. Along with it, some key initiatives like spectrum pricing, unified licences regime, M&A guidelines, finalisation of guidelines for spectrum sharing, creation of fund for R&D and manufacturing will be done by the deadline.

Currently, the MNP allows a user to switch over to a different operator within a particular circle retaining his/her number.

A total of 75.14 million subscribers have submitted their requests to use different service providers while retaining their numbers by the end of October this year, as per the TRAI record.