Colombia Sees 57 Million Mobile Number Portability Switches Since 2011

The Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC) presents a new report on mobile operator changes through the portability process in Colombia, providing figures on the number and causes of rejection of porting operations carried out during the fourth quarter of 2024.

According to the analysis carried out by the commission, as part of the work to monitor the behavior of regulated services, since the Mobile Number Portability measure was implemented in the country, which allows users to change mobile operator as many times as they wish with their line number, between August 2011 and December 31, 2024, approximately 57 million porting operations have been carried out.

During 2024, users requested a total of 7.08 million mobile operator changes, 15.5% less than in 2023, of which 1.77 million corresponded to porting operations carried out during the fourth quarter of this year (0.3% more than what was recorded in the third quarter).

In the last quarter of 2024, for portability, some operators gained more users than they lost, while others had a balance against. This was the behavior:

Operators with the most users gained:

• Claro: +93.528
• Movistar: +67.738

Operators that lost more users than they received:

• Tigo: -90.175
• WOM: -64.746

In the fourth quarter of 2024, 261,700 port requests were rejected, a decrease of 6.3% compared to the previous quarter. Claro had the highest number of rejected operations, with 87,200, followed by Tigo with 83,600, WOM with 43,700, and Movistar with 36,300.
The main reason postings were rejected is that the applicant was not the contract subscriber nor authorized to carry out the porting process (95.1%).

“The figures presented reflect that number portability continues to be a fundamental tool to promote competition in the Colombian mobile market, by empowering users to freely choose the operator that best suits their needs. The decrease in rejections and the stability in the volume of portings show advances in the efficiency of the process, which will be consolidated with the measures adopted in Resolution 7684 of 2025, which updates the causes of rejection and eliminates barriers for prepaid users, by allowing the change of operator even when the line is registered in the name of a distributor. Transferring to the receiving operator the responsibility of updating the ownership. In addition, it reinforces security by requiring data verification before activating new lines. From the CRC, we will continue working to make this process increasingly agile, transparent, and secure,” said Claudia Ximena Bustamante, Commissioner and Executive Director of the CRC.

Photo credit: Tigo Official Facebook page.