5G is coming, will you still port your number to another network?

According to the unified deployment of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, number portability will be implemented nationwide by the end of November. As an important means to expand users' freedom of choice and balance competition among operators, number portability has been highly anticipated. Now that the communications industry as a whole has entered a negative growth phase and 5G has been commercialized, can number portability still play the role expected?

1. Will the industry continue to poach employees when it falls into negative growth?

Data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that in the first three quarters, the total revenue of telecommunications business reached 991.4 billion yuan, the same as the same period last year, and 103.4 billion yuan in September, the same as the same period last year. The Q3 operating reports released by the three major operators showed that all revenues showed negative growth.

With the decline in revenue, the net profit of the three major operators has also shown a sharp decline. In the case that 5G urgently needs a lot of construction funds, the decline in operating income and net profit will gradually make operators feel the tightness of customer acquisition costs. Although the number of users of the three major operators has maintained a large-scale growth in the first nine months.

The communications industry has long been a red ocean market, and has already reached the ceiling of user growth. At a time when customer acquisition costs have long been high, an insider in the communications industry revealed that the customer acquisition cost of some local companies exceeds 500 yuan per user. Therefore, even if there is number portability, operators may not be willing to spend money to poach each other's employees.

2. Will the majority of users buy into the initiative if regulators actively promote it?

Recently, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that "number portability" is a people-oriented project that has attracted great attention from the society, and is also an important measure for the information and communication industry to implement the people-centered development philosophy and better benefit the people. In addition to the five provinces and cities that have already piloted the system, the system construction and transformation in the other 25 provinces have been completed and are being jointly debugged and tested nationwide.

The number of users who "port their numbers" to other networks in the five pilot provinces and cities, including Tianjin, Jiangxi, Hainan, Hubei, and Yunnan, is relatively stable every day. As of the end of September 2019, these five pilot provinces and cities, together with the original pilots, have completed a total of 2.9 million "number portability" users.

In fact, it has been nine years since the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launched the first batch of number portability pilot projects in Tianjin and Hainan on November 22, 2010. Compared with the 5%-8% number portability rate in more mature countries and regions abroad, number portability in China has not been as popular as expected, nor has it been widely accepted by users.

3. 5G has arrived. How much impact will it have on number portability?

On October 31, the three major operators will hold a 5G commercial launch ceremony at the opening forum of the 2019 China International Information and Communication Exhibition, and officially release 5G packages, which will be officially launched on November 1. From the issuance of 5G licenses to the renewal of 5G terminal access to the network, and then to the launch of 5G packages, 5G has accelerated.

The three major operators simultaneously launched the sale of 5G packages, and the price and volume of services included in the packages are also in the same range. Regardless of whether this joint action by operators is coordinated or not, it undoubtedly highlights the importance of 5G network capabilities and service capabilities when the impact of price factors is becoming less and less.

Among the three major operators, China Mobile is the absolute leader in terms of both network and service capabilities. China Mobile has the largest scale in both the past 4G network and the current 5G network. Moreover, the number of 4G base stations exceeds that of China Unicom and China Telecom combined. As of the end of October, China Mobile is also far ahead in terms of the number of 5G base stations built.

In fact, according to the Matthew effect theory of "the strong get stronger", although number portability can indeed expand the autonomy of users, it is conducive to enhancing the sense of gain of "hateful" users, and it can also force operators to better improve network capabilities and service quality, but this cannot fundamentally change the overall operating situation of operators.

The strong will always be strong. This was true in the 2G era, the 3G era, the 4G era, and now at the beginning of the 5G era, although the three major operators are working together, China Mobile has already taken the lead. Therefore, it may be possible to improve users' sense of gain by number portability, and it may also be possible to balance industry competition to a certain extent, but it may be too much to expect it to change the industry ranking.