Within the next few months, Barbadians will be able to switch their mobile and fixed landline numbers between service providers.
That announcement came Monday from Director of Digital Infrastructure in the Minister of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology (MIST), Clifford Bostic, who said that in addition to Digicel and FLOW offering number portability, a third provider who has been given a licence will do so as well.
“Yes, number portability is coming; it is going to be with us by the middle of 2022,” he said as debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2022 resumed in the House of Assembly.
“We have a third service provider in Barbados that has been licensed, and that is KW Telecommunications Ltd, and they are also preparing for number portability, as well as preparing to launch their services in Barbados.”
According to Bostic, Barbados and other regional partners have, for some time, been working on giving any mobile phone or landline user the ability to easily switch to another provider on the island and keep their number.
He said that after some delays, it will soon become a reality in Barbados and throughout the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).
“We are delivering to the market fixed landline number portability as well as mobile portability. We are going to implement legislation that is catering towards the harmonisation of legislation across CARICOM.
“This is one of the things that is now high on the priority list for implementation by CARICOM through our Telecommunications Union – that is, that we have a regulatory framework that is regional [and] allows us to provide services in a seamless manner right across this region, in the same manner as which our major providers that you know of, Digicel and Liberty Global, having a single network for a single ICT [Information and Communications Technology] space,” Bostic explained.
He said a commitment has been given by the telecoms providers to have number portability in place by mid-year, and they are working along with the Ministry “as well as a consultancy firm that has been doing number portability across Europe as well as across the Caribbean”.
“We are learning from the errors and mistakes from all those countries who have implemented number portability, and when we come to the market in mid-2022, you will see both mobile as well fixed services with number portability,” Bostic said. (SB)
