Kenyans can now switch from one mobile phone company to another free of charge just by sending a short text message.

The new rules by the Communications Authority of Kenya, also scrap the $2 fee and shorten the porting period from one month to four hours.

But a user will have to be issued with a new SIM card by the new operator who will settle the porting fee.

In a 24-page booklet, the CA said on Friday that it had resolved to review the procedures and guidelines for provision of mobile portability services in Kenya after holding lengthy deliberations with all players and other stakeholders in the industry.

“The review aims at making the porting process shorter and simpler for the benefit of consumers that wish to port. The key highlight is that consumers will no longer pay porting fees,” it said.

The public notice signed by CA Director-General Francis Wangusi effectively scraps the Ksh200 ($2) fees charged for porting and the lengthy period of time one had to wait before the number was deactivated and reactivated again under a new regime.

Mobile number portability is a telecommunications service that enables you to retain your telephone number when you change mobile operators.
This means that you can move from one mobile operator to another without losing your number, which is commonly referred to as porting.

The new move effectively empowers CA to manage all numbers that were formerly issued to individual operators Orange, Airtel and Safaricom, which will now be handled by the Central Reference Database Bureau.

CA said that number portability services will be provided at all mobile operator-owned retail outlets and that an operator will not stop a subscriber from migrating even when they have outstanding debts “as there exists a legal framework for solving debt collection, legal, contractual and other related issues.

Unlike the initial porting exercise when it was introduced that took two days, CA said that it will take a maximum of four hours to execute a porting process where one will have to send a short text message to 1501 before the applicant leaves the new subscribers’ outlet.

A migrator will be issued with a new SIM that will use their original number before a request is sent to the old operator to allow calls’ to be automatically routed to the new operator.