OK, so the two-hour deadline won’t come into effect until September 2009, but under existing legislation the limit will be dropped to two days in April 2008.

The other good news is that telecom companies won’t be able to cut the cost of transfer by forwarding calls to the new mobile phone operator.

This will “help protect consumers from the risk of losing calls if their old provider's network fails", Ofcom said. 

However, some industry watchers claimed the decision was a "knee-jerk reaction" to the European Commission’s recent orders that transfers take a maximum of 24 hours.

“In the review of the current European framework, the Commission proposed a maximum of 24 hours for operators to move their number to new providers," said Ovum analyst Matthew Howett.

"It is hard not to see Ofcom's decision as partly a knee-jerk reaction to this proposal.