Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/315910 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IDB Working Paper Series No. IDB-WP-1655
Publisher: 
Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Washington, DC
Abstract: 
This paper examines the effects of the introduction of mobile number portability (MNP) using data from Uruguay. MNP allows customers to switch mobile providers while retaining their phone number, thereby reducing switching costs and potentially enhancing competition. Our analysis reveals that firms responded by increasing the share of postpaid contracts, partially countering the exogenous reduction in switching costs with new endogenous barriers. We find that while market concentration increased in terms of subscriber share, it decreased for data traffic, reflecting differing customer behaviors and firms' commercial strategies. Additionally, we observed reductions in mobile data prices and an increase in new mobile subscribers, suggesting that MNP contributed to overall market growth. Using a world panel of data prices for the internet we find that MNP is associated with lower prices in the range of 42-50 percent.
Subjects: 
Mobile number portability
Telecommunications
Competition
Switching costs
Uruguay
JEL: 
L96
L51
D43
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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