Residents of Antigua and Barbuda will soon gain greater flexibility in their mobile telecommunications choices, as the national government has formally announced that mobile number portability (MNP) will be rolled out nationwide starting November 23. This long-planned policy reform will eliminate one of the most frustrating barriers to switching mobile service providers, allowing customers to move between the country’s three main operators — the Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA), Digicel, and Flow — without sacrificing the phone numbers they have used for years.
The official timeline and project update was shared by Maurice Merchant, Director General of Communications, during a post-Cabinet media briefing held this Thursday. Merchant’s announcement came one day after Cabinet received a comprehensive progress briefing from a cross-stakeholder team that included a senior APUA manager, a senior official from the Ministry of Telecommunications, and the independent consultant contracted to lead technical implementation of the MNP system.
The journey to launch MNP has not been straightforward. Planning for the system first began in 2022, but the project has encountered a series of persistent technical hurdles over the past two years. The single biggest challenge has been harmonizing connections between the distinct, incompatible networks and operating systems run by the three competing providers. To address this gap, project teams have carried out rounds of extensive testing and retesting, designed to ensure that number transfers work smoothly for end users with no disruptions to service.
Delivering a functional MNP system has also required substantial joint investment from both the national government and the three participating telecommunications companies, in addition to bringing in specialized outside technical consultants to guide implementation.
Under the current approved timeline, all initial porting trials are scheduled to wrap up by October 23. After that milestone, teams will conduct additional routing and end-to-end testing to confirm that phone calls, text messaging, data services, and other core mobile functions operate correctly after a number is transferred between networks. Testing will also be extended to retail service locations, where customers will submit their transfer requests in person, to verify that in-person workflows function as intended for both customers and staff.
Regulators and project leaders have emphasized that rigorous pre-launch testing is a non-negotiable step: their top priority is confirming that every part of the customer experience, from the initial transfer request to final activation of the number on the new network, works exactly as designed before the system is opened to the general public.
Merchant noted that the November 23 launch date was also chosen intentionally to align with Antigua and Barbuda’s hosting of major high-profile Commonwealth events taking place later this month. Based on the current technical progress and preliminary testing results, government officials are confident the project will meet this announced deadline.
For mobile customers across the country, MNP solves a long-standing pain point. For years, the need to get a new phone number — and the burden of notifying all contacts, employers, and clients of the change — has been one of the main reasons customers choose to stay with a provider they may be unhappy with, rather than switching to a competing operator with better pricing or service. Under the new system, customers will be able to switch between any combination of the three providers, retaining their existing number through the entire process.
Merchant reaffirmed that MNP is a service the general public has repeatedly requested over many years, and delivering this reform remains a core commitment of the current administration.