"Throw away the company keep your number"- Mobile Number Portability starts today. How to use MNP service?

Procedure/Steps to follow of using Mobile Number Portability(MNP).........
The nation-wide mobile number portability (MNP) service begins from Haryana on Thursday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) said. A notification explaining the procedures about porting their numbers has been issued by TRAI.

1. Send an SMS from your phone to 1900. 
2. Your present company will reply with a unique porting code.
3. Use that code while filling out a detailed form for the company you want to shift to. 
4. Within 48 hours, that company will take over all your cell services. 
5. The fee/amount charge may cost you about Rs. 19.
6. Your cell number will be switched off for only one hour. 
7. All bills after that are paid to your new company. 

Note: You'll be stuck with them for at least 50 days before you can shift again, so choose with care. 

While you can shift from a GSM service to CDMA or vice versa, you cannot shift from one state to another.

"The circles don't change. If you are in Karnataka, you are a Karnataka subscriber. If you shift from one state to another, roaming kicks in, just like it does right now," said Rajan Mathews.

However, if you stay in Haryana, you can switch companies starting on November 25. Everyone else will have to wait till early next year (2011). The industry says it can cope with the huge data transfers, without compromising national security.

"If in case, the Government wants to track or monitor someone, there will be robust methods to do that. Anyone planning to misuse the system because of MNP is going to be sorely disappointed," added Mathews.