Ten days after its introduction in Australia, just five percent of local mobile phone users have taken advantage of Mobile Number Portability (MNP) and switched carriers. This relatively low take-up, due in part to a series of MNP system glitches, has prompted an urgent review of the process by an industry watchdog, the results of which have just been released.

A ZDNet Australia user survey, which garnered more than 400 responses, has found that 70 percent of readers had no plans to change carriers, while 25 percent said they were gearing up for a change of service provider. Just five percent, however, said they had already ported their mobile phone number to a new carrier.

Australian Telecommunications User Group managing director Rosemary Sinclair said ZDNet Australia's figures are in line with all the studies that have been conducted by various investment analysts and strategic marketing firms that specialise in the telecommunciations marketplace.

-Most pundits believed that 25-30 percent would move. That figure might increase in time as contracts expire. There has been a significant growth in mobile phone contracts in the last 3 years and a high number of those people are on contracts because of the offer of free handsets."

The incidence of customer porting will -creep up" during the next 12-18 months, she said, as these contracts expire.

Around 6000 Australian mobile phone users had made the switch by early this week.

Holding about 46 percent of the market, Australia's largest carrier, Telstra, has the most to lose from MNP's introduction. With Optus (roughly 33 percent of market share) and Vodafone (about 19 percent) nipping at its heels, Sinclair said users could soon expect the telco giant to come to the party with more -aggressive" pricing plans.

-You could expect Telstra to bounce out of the blocks with some aggressive pricing strategies, but it also has the greatest opportunities for offering bundling strategies. If they get that right, they have a huge opportunity."

Sinclair said the rise of MNP also rests on increased consumer awareness of the service. Despite ongoing - and some would say overly-repetitive - advertising on the subject, Sinclair believes consumers have yet to fully understand the message and once they do, the rate of MNP take-up is likely to explode.

-Consumers are just now starting to understand what the offer really is. I don't think the experience during the last few weeks is anything to go by because there have been number of software and system difficulties that have, in part," stymied its take-up.

Responding to concerns about these -software and system difficulties", Sinclair said the Australian Communications Association (ACA) is taking an -extremely active" stance on the supervision of MNP practices. The ACA has just conducted an investigation, she said, which has resulted in several best practice standards, all of which have been agreed to by the various Australian carriers.

These service level agreements include:

* Starting immediately, 90 percent of ports should take place within three hours

* No port should take longer than two days

*Carriers must process an equal number of ports in and out of their systems

The ACA plans to conduct weekly reviews to ensure that these standards are met, Sinclair said.

Copyright © 2009 CBS Interactive, a CBS Company. All Rights Reserved.
ZDNET is a registered service mark of CBS Interactive. ZDNET Logo is a service mark of CBS Interactive.