Mobile Number Portability - Pointless or well-pointed?

My tribute to Faking News. I may have gone overboard... it was intentional.

"I am so excited about this whole Number Portability Thing. I will now be able to change my cellphone and keep my number" were the words of an excited Kangana Renaut when asked about what she felt about the latest craze in the Indian Telecom scene at the Filmfare awards. Our repeated attempts to correct her and inform her that she could have always changed her cellphone, was met with angry and confused stares from the film and television industry. We preferred to just stay shut.

Mobile Number Portability gives users the freedom to switch service providers while retaining their old numbers. In a developing Telecom market such as India with falling call rates, rising unsolicited calls and horrible voice quality, MNP would lead to greater competition, further decrease in call rates and other associated changes-opined a ponytailed Arindham Chaudhari in an interview in his office at the basement of the IIM, Bengaluru campus. "And we also provide free laptops to our students." We didn't stay to hear the rest.

On asking Nandan Nilekani, whether this was somehow related to the UID project- after an initial baffled look, he smiled, then stared pensively at the ceiling for some seconds and scratched his head. For a while it seemed he was about to answer but then held back and told us that he would reply by e-mail. We have received his mail but are yet to read it.

When our correspondents visited the offices of Idea, Vodafone and Tata Docomo to inquire about the intricacies, working and ideology of Mobile Number Portablity, why they believed it is going to be the next 'in-thing' and why their advertisements seem so pointless and have stupid background scores, we were asked to fuck off.

A study was conducted by the "Seven Sisters' Cultural Empowerment and Socio-Economic Development Agency" over the Golden Quadrilateral route in this regard. They concluded was that regardless of the service provider, the monthly pre-paid bills remain unchanged for a certain age group, economic stratum and gender, with a mean variance of 0.5%. We probed further, we asked them what mean variance meant and they just shook their heads.

Rumours abound that Spice is currently working on a Penta-SIM phone, that charges itself on exposure to pretty women and has a button for controlling movement of bears. "This will give us a significant advantage over our competitors", said a grinning Spice CTO Edward Chashmish in an exclusive interview. When asked about the secret to the company's revolutionary products, a candid Mr Chashmish revealed, "We invest a lot into R&D, our stickers don't fade easily"

With most Telecom Operators already offering the service and the rest with plans of jumping into the bandwagon soon, only time will tell whether it proves to be what it promises. If it fails, there's always the World Cup and IPL after that to keep us occupied.