The referendum on the 135 articles of the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC) put several issues up for debate. One of them is number portability.which came into force on January 12 and is questioned by the Broad Front and social organizations.
At an event for Yes, which took place in San José last Sunday, Carolina Cosse, on number portability, said: “it doesn’t come or go” and that what worries him is the “lack of planning” in public companies.
This generated the reaction of the president of Antel, Gabriel Gurméndez, who, through his Twitter account, replied to Cosse not to “worry” because “In Antel, the strategic plan managed to get more people to come than to leave”referring to portability.
“Now it turns out that portability ‘doesn’t work for him’ and ‘he is concerned about public companies without a strategic plan.’ Don’t worry: in Antel the strategic plan managed to get more people to come than to leave. Better take care of Montevideo Or is the plan just more debt?” Gurméndez asked.
Now it turns out that portability “doesn’t work for him” and “he is concerned about public companies without a strategic plan.” Don’t worry: in Antel the strategic plan managed to get more people to come than to leave. Better take care of Montevideo Or is the plan just more debt? https://t.co/LWefMxX3B7
— Gabriel Gurmendez (@ggurmendez) February 14, 2022
As reported The Observer, Antel prevailed over Movistar and Claro in the first weeks in which number portability was in force. As of February 1 the state company had a positive balance of 1,100 new clients while Movistar lost nearly 1,000 clients and Claro about 20.
What did Cosse say before?
Cosse’s position has not changed much over time. Since the LUC put the issue of number portability on the table, the current mayor of Montevideo assured that it was not an element that moved the needle.
In September 2020, for example, the former Minister of Industry had planned, in dialogue with 970Universal, than to the public company “capable until” it was doing “well” enabling number portability.
Beyond this, on that occasion, the former president of Antel maintained that it was the same “an old and unnecessary thing” and what to talk about it in “Whatsapp times” seemed to him from “Gotham City”.
Months later, in May 2021, in a session of the Senate Special Commission for the study of the LUC project, Cosse took up the reference to the instant messaging company, to combat the argument, by the defenders of the project , to take care of the user’s digital identity. “When you change phones, WhatsApp makes sure to reconfigure itself”. Thus, Cosse reasoned, “Each one of us owns his identity.”
On the other hand, in the same session, the mayor considered that number porting implied “the introduction of a fourth operator”. “There is beginning to be one more operator, which is the one that manages that modified database that, as has just been said, would be outsourced.”
The Cleartech Cietel consortium is the company appointed by the government to manage the database.
