www.WirelessFederation.com/news: BSNL and MTNL, both state-controlled telcos in India will not be able to meet the deadline set by Indian government for supporting mobile number portability (MNP). Both the companies have said that the deadline of end of 2009 will not be met as the necessary upgrades to their systems will take few more months.

The Department of Telecoms earlier decided that key metro markets will offer MNP by the end of this year while the rest of the country will receive it from next June. However, the service was supposed to be available from the end of September but the problems with the regulators and operators lead to its delay.

According to TRAI chairman JS Sarma, the companies may be labeled as anti consumer if they fail to meet the deadline this time. As per the guidelines decided by the Department of Telecommunications, country will be geographically divided into two Number Portability Zones namely zone 1 & zone 2, with11 licensed service areas each.

The license for Zone 1 (Northern and Western India) was granted to Syniverse Technologies while MNP Interconnection Telecom Solutions received the license for Zone 2 (Eastern and Southern India).

The selections were done on the basis of the guidelines for MNP service license.