Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has ratified a law allowing the introduction of number portability, local press reported.
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The country's communications ministry has until the end of 2009 to carry out the necessary technical and economic impact studies.
"Something that is very important about the approval of this law is that in addition to the benefits it will bring, it should be noted that the companies will pay for the investment needed to offer this service," congressman Simón Gaviria Muñoz, who proposed the new law, was quoted as saying.
Tulio Ángel Arbeláez, president of the cellular telephony association Asocel, also welcomed the news.
"Mobile phone operators see in a very good light this new service that will be offered to customers," Arbeláez.
The total investment needed by operators to have the system up and running would be US$50mn, newspapers reported.
US consultancy Yankee Group principal analyst for Latin America, Wally Swain told BNamericas that he is not sure the system will have a huge impact on competition in Colombia's market, adding that experience has shown that postpaid users have traditionally taken more advantage of NP.
"I think number portability is primarily a postpaid thing. And since we don't have 80 or 90% postpaid in these countries I don't think it is a big deal...it's a lot of money for a relatively small percentage of the base," Swain said.
Market observers have said that number portability had the greatest impact in countries that already had a high level of penetration of telephony services, making the market players more competitive in order to capture clients from other operators.
Colombia ended the first half with mobile penetration of 86.6%, according to consultancy The Competitive Intelligence Unit (CIU).
Portability is also said to have potential in markets with a particularly dominant player such as Telcel in Mexico which accounts for more than 70% of the mobile market. There is a similar situation in Colombia, where Comcel holds 65% of the market.
