The Timing of Introducing Mobile Number Portability

As one of the development trends of the international telecommunication industry, number portability has been introduced in many countries around the world and has played an important role in stimulating the competition and development of telecommunication market. However, the timing of introducing this policy has not been studied theoretically. The analysis of this paper shows that the welfare effect of introducing number portability is uncertain in a growing market. Number portability may reduce the social welfare if it is introduced when the market scale is increasing substantially, while it may increase the social welfare when the growing speed is not so high. Therefore, in keeping with the experiences of most countries around the world, number portability should be introduced when the scale of the telecommunication market has developed to the mature stage.