BitDepth 1574 for August 03, 2026

One year ago, at the end of a civil discussion about a column I’d written about the introduction of Fixed Number Portability, I promised Telecommunications Authority (TATT) CEO Kurleigh Prescod that I’d return to the topic in 12 months to assess how well the FNP project had done after launch.

Now it’s possible that Prescod anticipated that I’d keep my word, because just before that year was up, TATT hosted its 39th Public Forum to discuss “Number Portability: The myths, challenges and realities.”

Aired as a live panel discussion on CCN TV6 on July 08, it was an unusual affair, conducted on a set that was overwhelmingly blue in colour and underpinned by a persistent mechanical hum, as if it was being conducted in an industrial cold room or perhaps, a previously undiscovered lair of Batman villain Mr Freeze.

It certainly proved to be a cool environment for TATT representatives to answer softball questions gently tossed by moderator Wendell Ettienne or confused queries from the general public (a recording is available on the authority’s YouTube channel).

If you are also a potentially confused reader, here is the short version of what number porting is. TATT introduced mobile number porting to a rocky start in 2016 after starting the project in 2013.

As Prescod noted in a recorded address before the start of the forum, “Number portability offers a simple yet empowering concept: the ability for you, the consumer, to switch your telephone service provider whilst keeping your existing number.”

“It’s about putting choice and control firmly in your hands, promoting competition and better service quality across the board.”

“It’s a win for us, as it is for you, the consumers, to be able to keep your phone number while switching providers. It forces providers to compete on service and value, encouraging innovation. For commercial customers, consider the cost savings from avoiding the need to change stationery and branding.”

“For TATT, establishing an effective number portability framework is a signal of our commitment to modern, fair markets.”

Despite such noble goals, mobile number portability faced significant challenges, both overt, in the form of legal challenges by TSTT and subtly, as expressed in allegations by Digicel of deliberately botched number ports.

According to Aaron Simon, Manager, Networks and Standards, “It’s a journey that started a long time ago, sometime around 2010, a couple of years after TATT would have been formed, we were on this journey of liberating the market.”

“We would have started work on facilitating the implementation of number portability. The first real success [was] in 2016 when we were able to launch mobile number portability with the two existing mobile operators.”

That success has been sustained. According to Prescod, since going mainstream, mobile number portability has achieved an average of 5,000 ports each month.

Fixed number porting has not done nearly as well, with a total of 500 ports done since the service was introduced.

Some of this is explained by market balance. There are, according to TATT’s fourth quarter 2025 market report, 282,000 fixed line subscribers in Trinidad and Tobago.

That number has been dropping incrementally year over year, the last recorded decline being 16.1 percent between 2024 and 2025.

Most of that decline is happening in residential services. Business services have hardly budged in that time, moving from 33,000 to 32,000 subscribers between December 2024 and December 2025.

By comparison, there are 1,707,000 mobile subscribers in Trinidad and Tobago, and the decline in users has been gradual, registering a decline of just 4.7 percent over 2025.

The comparison in service uptake between fixed lines and mobile is particularly stark when services per 100 users are compared. For fixed lines, that number is 20 per 100, for mobile, it is 125.

In terms of market distribution, the trends are clear. Trinidad and Tobago’s markets have been very set in their preferences for more than a decade and while it has taken some time for the concept to settle in as an option, it’s apparently now here to stay.

“We would have seen in some of the very mature markets [liberalising] between 1990 and 1999,” Aaron Simon said.

“They started their journey very early. Then we saw some other mature markets starting their journey in the 2000’s. Markets like ours, who were a bit later to the opening up around the 2010’s would have embarked on a journey of number portability, [but] we weren’t alone when we were doing our launch.”

“We had some of the Caribbean islands as well, Jamaica, Bahamas in particular. They started around the same time as us, early to mid 2010s. Looking at the success, we would have experienced some of the small islands following suit in 2019 and we even have some Caribbean islands now embarking on the journey of number portability.”

“It was very heartening to see other markets, whether big or small, having similar experiences. Some of the things we see in terms of the success rate, some of the failure rates, the reasons for some of the failures. It’s fairly common across other administrations.”

For TATT to give this much time and effort to a process that is, in the larger picture of their role as a regulator, a small thing, is both useful and positive. Businesses are usually good at deciding where to take their telephony business and will consider the economics of a port fully before taking that leap.

While Bobbi Rogers, TATT’s Manager of Public Relations and Consumer Affairs went to some lengths to construct hypothetical scenarios of elderly fixed line users needing to hold on to their legacy numbers, that is, quite literally, a dying market.

Given the fixed line market’s size and pronounced decline, FNP is unlikely to represent a service with accelerating demand, but thoroughness in regulatory oversight has its own value.

TATT is also chasing ghost markets in its efforts to improve free-to-air transmission, (it began a technical pilot to test high-definition transmission for six months in December 2024 at TV6,) given the decline in that market as well.

Free-to-air television revenues dropped 21.2 percent in 2025, earning revenues of just $7.8 million (TTT did not bother to report to TATT and its revenues were estimated, or more likely, over-estimated).

Over the same year, subscription TV revenue was $140 million, dropping by 4.1 percent (Greendot did not report revenues).

Dwarfing both are the revenues for fixed internet for 2025, $349.4 million, with a decline of 0.03 percent.

There are trends on clear display here that TATT must be aware of. Attention to the little things in regulation are important, but so is a focus on the really big things that the markets are adopting vigorously.

Key points about Number Portability

You cannot port from fixed to mobile or from mobile to fixed.
Your service must be active throughout the process. This may mean that you are billed for availability on your previous service during the porting process.
The porting process cannot begin until your outstanding bills are settled. You must be free of “encumbrances,” in TATT’s words.
Both post-paid and pre-paid mobile numbers can be ported.
There are six fixed telephone service providers, inclusive of cable services which provide telephony.
If you have a telephone service with a fixed telephone service provider that is part of a bundle, you may have to renegotiate your bundled services, but you cannot be denied that option, according to TATT.
In the porting process, you only take your number. All other services or negotiated concessions or inducements such as roll-over minutes and voice mail are lost in the process.