Telecoms competition to heat up from July… same phone number, different company

Last Updated on Wednesday, 17 May 2023, 13:03 by Denis Chabrol

Guyanese are from July, 2023 expected to be able to keep their existing phone numbers but change to a phone company of their choice, Chairman of the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) Dela Britton announced on Wednesday.

“PUC now eagerly awaits the completion of the testing processes and we anticipate that number portability will become a reality in Guyana in July of this year,” said Ms Britton, an Attorney-at-Law by profession.

Addressing the opening of a webinar titled “Telecoms Sector in Guyana- Navigating This New Frontier”, she described number portability as a “game-changer” in a competitive telecoms sector as it allows subscribers to keep their existing telephone or cellular numbers when switching providers. “It generally forces players, when faced with competition to improve their service offerings,” she said.

Last year December, the Guyana government announced that it had granted a number portability and data processing licence to the Netherlands-headquartered company, PortingXS B.V.

Guyana’s phone service providers are GTT, Digicel, E-Net and more recently Green Gibraltar.

Tracing the advent of number portability in Guyana, the PUC Chairman said in July 2021 a collaborative number portability working group had been established, in October 2021 the Request for Proposals was issued and a technical clearing house was selected in early 2022.