Strong num­ber porta­bil­i­ty (NP) ac­tiv­i­ty is set to con­tin­ue in 2013 fol­low­ing the trans­fer of some 0.78 mil­lion mo­bile num­bers in the first 12 months af­ter the in­tro­duc­tion of NP at the be­gin­ning of 2012, said Pe­dro Pablo Err�zur­iz, Chile's Trans­port and Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions (MTT) Min­is­ter at a press con­fer­ence.

The ac­tiv­i­ty which has been seen so far in Jan­u­ary has been sim­i­lar to what was seen in the same month of the pre­vi­ous year, ac­cord­ing to the min­is­ter.

Mean­while, post­paid mo­bile tar­iffs have been re­duced by some 25 per cent since NP was in­tro­duced, with that fig­ure reach­ing 40 to 50 per cent for pre­paid tar­iffs.

The lev­el of NP ac­tiv­i­ty has sur­passed ex­pec­ta­tions for the first year, and the com­pa­nies which have lost clients are re­act­ing, and in­vest­ing to strength­en ar­eas which are mak­ing them less com­pet­i­tive, he added.

In line with trends ob­served in De­cem­ber, Claro and new play­ers in the mar­ket have re­mained the win­ners in num­ber porta­bil­i­ty.

Claro has seen net gains of 126,358 as of Jan­u­ary 15, fol­lowed by Vir­gin with 17,911, VTR with 9,655 and Nex­tel with 6,918. Mean­while, the mar­ket lead­ers both saw net loss­es, with En­tel los­ing 52,617 net clients and Mo­vis­tar 109,123 clients. En­tel, how­ev­er, high­light­ed its lead­er­ship in post­paid NP, where 44.7 per cent of clients who port­ed their num­ber moved to the op­er­a­tor.

In to­tal, 56.1 per cent of mo­bile num­bers port­ed were pre­paid, while the re­main­der were post­paid, ac­cord­ing to Err�zur­iz.

(Busi­ness News Amer­i­c­as)