The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa’s) recent proclamation of regulations to enable businesses to port their nongeographic phone numbers will bolster competition and enable more provider choices for the call centre industry.

Nongeographic numbers, such as those starting with 0800, 0860, 0861, 0862 and 087, are used by local businesses, nonprofit organisations and consumers for toll-free, shared-cost, premium rate and Voice-over-Internet Protocol services.

According to the Independent Service Providers’ Association (ISPA), while number portability has enabled millions of people to change their network operator or provider without losing their telephone number, with over one-million geographic numbers and eight-million mobile numbers having been ported, the porting of nongeographic numbers has not been possible until now.

“For businesses with inbound call centres on nongeographic numbers, for example, this posed a major challenge,” says Euphoria Telecom CTO Nic Laschinger, pointing out that changing numbers comes with significant costs and inconvenience, especially for larger businesses, as they would need to change all their marketing collateral and business information across directory listings, advertisements and business cards, besides others.

“The industry has been waiting for 16 years for these regulations to come into effect, and the impact is expected to be significant once the regulations come into effect on March 7,” he says.

On December 15, 2021, Icasa published the relevant Number Portability Regulations in the Government Gazette allowing the porting of nongeographic numbers from March 7, enabling the transfere of these numbers to any telecommunications provider a business chooses.

The move was also welcomed by Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which described it as a landmark decision.

“The move resolves a significant issue that businesses in South Africa have had for some time. “While individual consumers have been able to port their numbers between telecommunications service providers since 2006, businesses, State-owned enterprises and call centres have been locked into their original service provider, owing to the inability to port nongeographic numbers,” says Liquid Intelligent Technologies.

“Liquid is excited by the opportunities it opens – especially regarding cloud migration, business agility and the ability to upgrade operations without losing a key part of an enterprise’s identity.”

Laschinger adds that competition has now been introduced to a segment of the local telecommunications market that desperately needs it.

“The call centre industry is a major employer in South Africa, employing some 270 000 people. “Nongeographic number portability will enable call centre businesses to choose providers that meet their needs exactly, enable large businesses to switch providers without incurring massive costs and have a positive impact on competition in the sector as a whole, all of which will contribute economically. It is a major win.”

Further, ISPA, which has been calling for the full implementation of number portability for over a decade and a half, highlights that Icasa also finalised the technical details of how number portability will actually work in its amendments to the Ordering System Specification.

“This welcome news also signals to business and consumers the necessity of holding off on entering into further long-term agreements with providers. “This is because the full implementation of number portability will soon see greater competition in providing telecoms services when it comes to nongeographic phone numbers,” says ISPA regulatory adviser Dominic Cull.

“The next two months will be an opportunity to investigate deals and determine if you are getting the best service and value offering from your incumbent provider.”