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Cell Phone Number Portability Finally A Reality?
graphicartist82 writes "MSNBC is running an article about the upcoming deadline for cell phone companies to let customers keep their numbers when switching companies. FCC Chairman Michael Powell has already extended the deadline once, but plans to stay with the Nov 24th, 2003 deadline. Companies like Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile have committed to meeting the deadline. I, for one, would love this. I've had the same cell phone number for years now -- it's where everybody knows how to get a hold of me. Other companies are now offering better services in my area where they weren't before. If I can keep my number and get a better service, I'm all for it! (Even if I have to pay a fee like the article suggests)."
Sounds like we're getting closer to a universal identity number. Kinda creepy, kinda cool.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
Is anyone aware of any regulations allowing you to transfer your home phone number to your cell phone if you were to disconnect your home phone number? I think I remember reading about rules stating you could keep your home phone number if you switched land carriers, and now you'll be able to keep your cell phone number when you switch cell carriers, but what about if you are ditching your land line altogether?
Forget the whales - save the babies.
> "We're changing the way we think about phone services," said independent telecommunications analyst Jeff Kagan. >
as long as they let me keep my sanford and son and diff'rent strokes ring tones I'll be a happy man!
Fear Breeds Knowledge
I looked at buying a Sony/Ericsson P800 this morning. Its cheaper on Orange than on Vodafone (my current provider). Even when changing providers, I'd get a temporary new number for 7-10 days, and then my old vodafone number would work on my new provider.
Or, thats the THEORY anyway, according to the salesman. I've not done it before, so I have to take him at his word.
I know the cell phone company with the walkie talkie feature is supporting WNP(wireless number portability).
"I'm not sure why we need it, as 30 some odd percent of the customers in this country switch carriers every year without this grand and glorious number portability opportunity," said Richard Lynch, Verizon Wireless chief technology officer.
Gee, maybe it's because your service sucks so badly, that people are willing to change *despite* the horrible inconvenience?
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
I can't see I approve actually, just because of that - but maybe you don't have the possibility of deducing the carrier from the number as it is?
it's in my head
No offense, but if you now rejoice at this news, then you are trully living in mobile communications stone age.
Anywhere in Europe, this is expected/demanded by the customers.
/. Where the truth
This is already a reality in Sweden. And in 4 months, also in Finland.
Cell phone companies will find another way to prevent you from taking your cell phone number and/or equipment when you change carriers. It's sad, really, but that's the way these companies operate - snag the customer, keep them until they either default, or just can't take anymore.
I want it so that when you sign up to a company, you can keep the phone, even if you change services - the phone number can be changed, I don't care. But other people's milage my vary...
and i'm glad to see my employer is acquiescing without a fight.
What I would like, is if carriers lived up to what they "say" you get with a plan (as far as coverage, and often battery life for phones, etc). My carrier advertises high coverage, they even have a little map indicating coverage areas, but when it comes down to actual reception, my home city has "dead spots" which are really not accounted for (notably the mall area, outside not inside, which is often somewhere one might want to use the phone for calling rides, etc).
If a carrier doesn't live up to their boasts, we should be able to drop a bad contract - even the big 3yr ones - without a surcharge, and keep our number while moving onto a (hopefully) better provider.
I don't see this happening though... I've never heard of anyone successfully cancelling a contract based on the carrier not meeting their promises.
no one said that you HAD to keep the old number.
And while we were at it, when was the last time that you were able to initiate local (landline) or cellular service without provifing ID, and credit information(for non-prepaid)?
Strange.
MNP has been available for quite some time now over here.
We sure had our load of problems with it, mostly due the vast number of people changing. The operaters just couldn't keep up.
There is just one problem. Without MNP you allways knew that somebode with a number with the same "network code" as yous was cheap to call. Now you might be calling another network without knowing it (and therefore paying more).
The operators had to set up a system to let a caller know (with a beep) that he is using another network. (This was demendad by consumer organisations...)
But in any case, it seems to work fine now.
Since all mobile operators of more or les the same service, most transfers were purely based on "Price".
There has been a movent from the more expensive one to the cheaper one, but the net result is apparently insignificant compared to the number new customers (not coming in via MNP)
120 chars is not enough!
Shouldn't the company you're moving to cover this fee? It's in their interests to make sure that new customers don't feel they have to pay anything to switch.
This is a huge win for consumers. This levels the playing field for true competition. It gives us more power to leverage against our carriers.
Feel like you are getting terrible service? Call customer support and say "I am very unhappy with my service. Can you fix it? No? Ok, I will switch carriers tomorrow. So will my entire family and anyone I know that I can pursuade." That is the benefit.
I fully expect to see more competitive pricing plans because the entry/exit barrier for carriers have gone down. Of course I also expect to see stiffer penalties in ending contracts early to offset this.
Recently we got full number portability for landline numbers between carriers, as well as geographic portability. This means that when you move within Denmark, you can always take your number with you. Needless to say, it's a pretty cool feature.
I hope this is a nifty troll. sigh....
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
In the fledgling days of GSM, UK providers allowed you to port your analogue mobile number over to a GSM phone, but only while staying with the same provider. A few years back they implemented the cross migration of GSM mobile numbers between providers. You are issued with a new temporary mobile number when you buy your new phone on your new provider, and you fill in various paperwork. The new provider then applies to your current provider for permission to release the number - if you haven't paid your bills up to date etc then they wont release it! If all goes well the transfer happens and you can start receiving calls with your old number on your new phone within a month or so.
Doogie. If you can read this, my sig fell off
its called a social security number and they usually make you give it to GET a cell phone (at least a plan, not a pay as you go)
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
Actually I was just joking. Slippery slope, drm, all the buzzwords ya know. I was hoping the phone number -> National ID thing would be enough of a stretch that no one would take me seriously :)
Irrespective of who you're with and who you are moving to, inthe UK you can always take your phone number with you when you change provider.
In most cases, changing provider is as easy as falling off a log. When I changed my provider last year (to Virgin Mobile) all I had to do was buy the new SIM card, pop it into my existing handset, and call Virgin to set up my account and give them the details of my existing number. They gave me a changeover date, until which time I used my old SIM card (so people could still reach my on the number that I had given out to them). Three days later I was using my new SIM card with my "old" number. It really is that simple.
Number portability is so damn easy and obvious, I can't see any reason not to use it (unless you really want a new number so that your ex-whatever stops hassling you). Conspiracy theorists need to chill on this one too - after all, you can always get a new number if you want to but, like I said, why would you want to put yourself through that much inconvenience? Do you really want to have to call up all your friends, family and colleagues to give them all your new number?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I've changed my service provider 3 times now, and taken my number with me each time, aty no cost to me.... Strange that a nation like the USA, which is technologically advanced in many ways, is still behind in Cell technologies / practices / procedures. Makes you proud to be British (for about 5 minutes)
Oh, here in italy, for luck (we are the second cell phone market in the world, also dogs, in a moment, have their owns), number portability is a reality from about an year. ;-P
I just switched my work phone from Wind to Vodaphone iwthout any problem. You buy a new SIM and ask for number portability. They give you a "parking numeber" to use your new phone and, about 15 days after, your old numer is transferred on the new company.
The interesting thing is that phone company offers you everything to keep your old number and stole it from another company
See you
---Pila---
do we really want to keep the same number of a long time?
I've had my current number since I first bought a mobile phone, back in 1997. For the past 6 years I've changed/upgraded phones 2 times, and used 3 different service providers.
All these companies, and no doubt countless others, keep the number in their records, share it, sell it, you name it.
The amount of spam I get on the mobile is nothing compared to email spam (1:5000?) but it's much more disruptive, because email spam doesn't make my trousers vibrate. The problem is when the price of bulk SMS goes down, a probable thing eventually, enough to make spam a real problem in mobiles.
It would be far more interesting if network operators let you change the number often, rather than keep it for long periods. That, or letting you have 2 or more numbers, so you give 1 to your family, 1 to your business contacts, and another to give away in on/offline forms, etc (you can do this already if you pay for re-direction numbers, but I'd rather have it as a network service).
Although portability is good in terms of (personal) freedom, and may produce a more competitive market, expect higher prices when buying new terminals. Heres why:
1) Mobile phone companies usually offer new phones for less than they pay for the terminals -- no problem, as they know that you wont like to lose your phone number, and therefore they will get a lot of money from you.
2) If you are able to switch easily to a competitor because you wont lose your number, that means that companies will no longer offer cheap terminals.
At least, this is what happened in Spain. A couple of years ago, new terminals were quite cheap. When portability arrived, prices rocketed.
In holland this has been common practice for years, although it might take up to three weeks depending on your service provider.
While this is a great change in policy regarding number portability, I imagine that what this will also do is increase the obligation of phone customers to sign longer contracts. It's the only thing that will protect a carrier from users infinitely hopping to the best current deal.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
I've used it once while transfering from orange to O2, it was very smooth (in the UK).
r nu mber/0,,601,00.html
http://www.o2.co.uk/business/wheretobuy/keepyou
Even though WLNP is not effective until November 24, 2003, most carriers are already charging you for their costs of setting it up. Generally its about a 75 cent fee per line per month.
I know some people who work for a wireless provider who say that wireless companies will be charging ALL customers with a flat service fee to facilitate number portability.
In the UK and most of Europe, as others have said, this has been a standard facility since the EU deemed that the telcos were technically able to do this and were putting limits on the freedom of customers who were able to choose a good deal or their old number, but rarely both.
That said, they do like to get their claws into you other ways. I have a phone with Orange and I'm out of luck if I want to use anyone elses SIM card in it (ignoring the backstreet hackers who will fix it for me) as they lock it to their network. All this means is I need a new handset if I switch networks, no real problem now, but when I next upgrade I'll be getting a convergence device (Sony Ericsson P800 for example) and these aren't something you want to have to buy all over again when you switch networks.
Time to call my MEP.
That is precisely the reason why wireless operators are fiercely objecting to this rule.
If a provider lives up to its promises and offers decent services, the clients are unlikely to change providers. Only those who know they have bad services would want to object. I say this rule is precisely what we need to make the providers do something to improve on their services.
I bought forwarding on my second land line (which I used before I had cable modem). I chanegd cell phone carriers a lot.. but I only gave people the second land line number. I set it up to forward to whatever cell phone I was using at the time. A little more costly but well worth it.
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
I work for a company that sells billing and number management software to most of the big cellphone carriers. At this point, the upgrades necessary to support transfering phone numbers from company to company are either in production already or in very late stages of testing.
In most older systems, the carriers had boxes dedicated to keep a DB with every single phone number they really had access to. Changing this system to support transferring phone numbers between companies was neither cheap nor easy.
First of all, in the past you were able to tell which network you are calling by the phone number. If people will keep their numbers while switching back and forth, it will result that I will never ever call a cellphone again. And if they mix also the fixed phone numbers with the cell ones, I might as well terminate my phone contracts. The costs are huge for calls outside your network. Now you won't be able to tell when you are being scalped untill blood fills your eyes...
I hate the things. My mobile has been switched off and in my bedside drawer for so long they've probably deactivated the number by now. Hate them hate them hate them.
I work in mobile telecoms, too. Now isn't that odd?
Than you'll have the same service as we have in Belgium for more than a year. Welcome to the civilised world :-)
Mark
Consider Nextel's Boost branded prepaid service. Only a $1 for the walkie-talkie feature, unlimited for that day, only charged on the days you use it (comes out to about $30 a month for unlimited use if you use it every day).
Sign a new service agreement with the new company, get a discounted phone. Even though your keeping your old number, it's still a new service agreement with the company. Of course, the cellphone companies could make number portability cost prohibitive, but I doubt they will cuz they're crazy on the competition.
Now we can just give every person a cell-phone number at birth, and they can keep it for their whole lives, and use it like a permanent, worldwide ID.
Isn't that nifty?
Here it is possible for AFIAK about a year now. I have some friends which switch operaters. The main reason was mostly the call costs. As far as I know we still have the highest minute-rates of Europe... :(
I spent a few years overseas in the Philippines and rather like the system they have going there.
Anybody can make the actual cell phone but nearly everyone uses a Nokia. Price varies inversely proportional to the size but phones can be had for around $50 - $100. Buying the phone requires no contract, no ID, no commitment, no hassle, and most of all no forms. Just beg, borrow or steal your way into a phone.
Once you have the actual phone, it needs a "sim card" to function properly. This is basically just the gold-plated chip you see embedded in smart cards - but it's just the chip. This is the phone's identity - a phone number is associated with the sim card, and it can also store your phone number list and other small tidbits of information. These are usually under $10. They key point is the sim card is made to be user-replaceable. Once again, no activation, contract, or commitment required.
Sim card goes into back of phone, and all you need are some prepaid cards. There are really only 2 service providers, so you just have to buy a corresponding prepaid card (sold literally on and in between every street corner) from a reseller. When you type the 16-digit code from the back of the prepaid card into your phone, it authenticates and then stores the value onto your sim card.
The system is great because it's completely anonymous, there are no service fees, and most of all, changing phones is as easy as popping the sim card out of the back and into the new phone. Changing providers requires the purchase of a new sim card (= new phone number) but the competition is so stiff between the two that rates and coverage are virtually identical.
The major drawback to the system is that since the phone number can be replaced so easily and cheaply (simply buy a new sim card), theft is a major problem. The phones are all GSM phones which is some dumb acronym, but the Filipinos jokingly equate GSM with "Galing sa Magnanakaw" or "coming from a thief," since practically any phone on sale outside of a mall is stolen.
The companies offer you phones for free but make up for it with higher overall prices once you are locked in. It makes sense for them to tie you into hardware, as American phones are carrier-specific anyway.
Expect that nokia which you got for free to cost you 100 dollars now. If you figure the phone company is gouging you to the tune of 10 dollars per month due to effectively creating a monopoly pricing market, over the two-year upgrade cycle you have lost 140 dollars on the deal. If you upgrade every 3 years, that's 260 dollars down the tube.
They wouldn't do it if it wasn't financially advantageous to them. As I mentioned however, the US is a seething pile of mixed signal standards, and will likely remain so for many years keeping people locked in to the hardware as before... When and if this finally gets implemented and you are really itching to run, like when a phone company drops your night and weekend minutes and charges you 300 dollars in a single billing cycle, you can switch without upsetting business contacts which may be worth significantly more than the cost of a phone.
-C
The ______ Agenda
"If people will keep their numbers while switching back and forth, it will result that I will never ever call a cellphone again"
woohoo... one less brain-dead neanderthal retard clogging up the network bandwidth. should make it easier for the rest of us to get through!
Only reason I keep my Sprint cell phone is because I don't want to switch numbers.
Sprint has bad reception, bad service, and questionable billing practices.
1) They changed my plan without telling me, canceling my free long distance.
2) I get terrible reception throughout Greater Boston. Once when I called to complain, a Sprint rep told me they don't guarantee your phone will work INDOORS!
3) A friend of mine got demoted to a special "tech support B-list" because of his credit rating. Ever since then he has had to PAY BY THE MINUTE to have Sprint resolve service or billing issues. WHEN HE WAS OVERCHARGED ONE MONTH BY ABOUT $80 HE HAD TO ***PAY*** TO SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE TO CLEAR THE ISSUE UP!
IS THIS LEGAL????
I'll bet Sprint is shaking in their boots...they have pretty horrible service, with sections of Fairfax (just west of Washington D.C.) not getting any service at all. There's no reason that in a large, suburban area I should get service drops on my cell phone. Verizon phones don't seem to have this problem, they can get service just about anywhere around this area.
Were I allowed to keep my phone number, I would have swithced long ago to Verizon's service plans. Considering now Verizon is offering all the things that only Sprint had awhile ago (free long distance, for one) for the same price, I'd definitely switch.
--trb
...that this spells the end of SpintPCS. For years their service has been steadily getting worse (or steadly staying the same while others have gotten better?).
Every single person I know who uses Sprint complains about their service. Why do they keep it? Because nobody (myself included) wants to lose their number.
Their coverage is crap and they're the only major PCS provider that, for some crazy reason, has chosen to ignore the top and most popular handset providers in the world (Motorola, Nokia, Ericsson) and instead sell only crappy, cheap, Korean phones (Kyocera, LG, Samsung, Sanyo) that everyone hates.
I, for one, am extremely excited about number portability....time to force the bad companies to shape up or ship out.
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
This has the advantage the it's also backward compatible - people without access just use phone numbers.
Here in the US, calls all cost the same amount of money regardless of who you call. I've even called people in Canada and not been charged.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
My company changed 300 cell phones from one provider to another - keeping the old numbers - worked just great.
Also to do this on your personal number cost around UKP20 =US$30 or so.
Some information Here and Here
I know other European and Asia Pac countries have the same sort of agreements in place.
Evil ZEN Scientist
In Italy we've had number portability for about one year... Kinda cool, actually, no problem with that. Hey, here we have more mobile phones per person than anywere else in the world, without number portability it was starting to get a real mess!
Ander
@=
The United States is about the same same as Europe. We also don't have a "single" standard for technologies (GSM) or a government controlled telephone company (i.e Spain). Why doesn't everyone backoff the United States...were still the best anyway.
Uhhh .... where does this 30 percent switch to? Other cell phone companies. If they merely switch providers, that means that the industry isn't losing any customers. If people completely stop using cell phones, then the industry loses customers. Also, if the cancellation fee applies for ending the contract, they end up with $200-$250 (I'm not sure exactly where it stands with every provider) anyway. The companies that will lose money are the providers that provide the poorer service, so they do have reason to worry.
A few years ago in Japan, they took all the mobile phone numbers (each provider basically had their own area code, at that point), and changed the phone numbers such that EVERY cell phone number began with 090.
The transition wasn't that difficult for people to adjust to. There was a really simple rule to follow for anyone's number. If it used to begin with 010, for example, the new number would be 090-1-[rest of number].
The benefit to this is that in Japan, it's *very* easy for people to tell if a phone number is a mobile number, and that has a direct impact on the cost of making a call. Here in the US, it would also make it easy to tell telemarketers "you cannot call any number with this prefix" rather than the current "you cannot call any mobile number" system, which invariably results in errant calls from autodialers. And, it would make transferring phone numbers from one provider to another even easier, since they are all pulling numbers from the same pool, so to speak.
Well, for me, my cell phone number has always been a part of my (geek) personality. Losing the operator number (-50) wouldn't be the end of the world, but the phone number is mine.
Having a list of users who are not on the operator the address sounds like a routing problem to me. You would need to list a bunch of numbers which need to be treated as "special cases", which would mean that every number called to would first need to be looked up.
Stupid.
Here's my solution: Reserve a prefix for the people who want to have a "perennial" telephone number, a kind of a "forwarding number". Heck, i have a few mail addresses myself that forward to another inbox. Shouldn't be too hard with telephones; they have call diverting there already. This is the same, innit?
On a side note, they will soon introduce the possibility to keep your number while changing operators here in Finland. The charging scheme was a bit complex. There are a few leading thoughts on telephone costs here. First, the caller should always know how much the call will cost. Second, the receiving party will not have to pay for answering the phone (unless s?he is abroad, and then pays for the forwarding costs from "home" to the destination). However, since different operator have different costs, who will then pay for the difference? Sure as heck not the operators...
The situation is the same in Sweden nowadays.
But it didn't just happen by itself or some "invisible hand". The telcos with large market share liked the lock-in effect of not being able to keep your old number when switching providers. Competitors (one of them Orange btw.) and customers hated it.
The government finally settled the matter in the name of free competition.
It seems to have lowered prices somewhat too.
And it's nice to be able to just take your number and leave if your provider is being an ass.
For instance, my provider at work occasionaly spams me with sms, so I don't use them anymore for my private phone, can't do anything about the one at work though...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
With all the idiots thinking number portability is just like pushing a button on the switch.
If I knew that I could keep my number if I changed providers, I would feel much less reluctant about getting cell service at all.
The cell carriers are saying that this will cause them a lot of losses, but you have to realize that there is no net loss when someone changes carriers. The only ones who lose out are the ones who provide inferior service.
I predict there will be a net gain as the last few Americans who are waiting to get cell phone service sign up.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Time to replace keyboard, fingers, or brain. Thanks!
here in europe we have this since at least one or two years... (in switzerland at least)
well good to hear that progresses are made overthere.
what is the matrix?
Nice, next step are portable E-mail adresses???
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
We have that already, it's called "the phone book".
Where do you think Sun first got the name for their DNS replacement from? Hint: its acronym used to be "yp"
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
and about 4 months ago we upgraded the POS software to support this. And boy did it mess things up.
Although it would be nice to do this I believe that the real hurdle is yet to come when people can move their cell phone numbers. That hurdle is when you move between long distance areas. Yes I can now keep my cell phone number, Yes I have free long distance, Yes I have a nationwide long distance provider providing my cell phone, No one where I moved to can call me from a land line free of charge however.
The next real question is how do we handle this? Why can't modify long distance next. Long distance has not had an overhaul in over a decade. Since my new cell phone company is local I should now be able to be called locally from anywhere that cell phone company does business in my opinion not just based on the 3 digit archaic area code. With my free roaming across the country when I'm on the other coast from my local area people should still be able to call me for free if my cell phone company provides me free long distance and has local service in that region.
I am sure that sprint for example does not get handed the call and route the data all the way to my home town in order to send it back to where I am currently.
Anyone have any ideas when we'll see a major overhaul of long distance to accomidate roaming numbers and perpetual numbers anytime soon?
That in my opinion will be the next real battle to be fought as local carriers and long distance carriers will fight against.
The Bells out there are making damn sure that no one even brings up the idea of making your home phone number portable to a cell phone.
Imagine this: IT'S NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN.
The phone companies basically run the FCC, they want the cellular carriers to go nuts with this kinda garbage, while they continue to glue their phone numbers to their customers. (and then force you to change numbers if you move down the street)
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I sure hope it is a reality considering sprint has already started billing for the expence of changing their system.
It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
I bought a new cell phone today here in the UK (T68i.. finally bluetooth interaction between my Mac and Mobile!)... I changed networks and was able to port over my original number with no problem at all, and also no charge... Overall, I'll have had the same number for 4 years, and with 3 different networks... Now if only they didn't fleece me for calls made over my airtime limit I'd be really happy...
In Norway cellular number portability became a reality November 1st, 2001.
The reason it didn't happen until then was primarily that (some) powerful operators wanted to lock in customers, not because of technical difficulties.
We have a state organisation (is that the correct term in English? 'Konkurransetilsynet' for those who understand Norwegian) that ensures that competition is fair in any specific market, and they had a large say in the matter...
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
GSM allows you to buy a new phone like you might buy a new wristwatch, switch over the little GSM card - and you are up and running, no need to phone your provider, and no need to worry about whether a given phone will work with a given service provider. I was able to wander all over the world (except the US, of course) and receive calls on my cellphone.
Providers fight each-other tooth and nail for your business, unlike the US where I have to wait for up to an hour before speaking to someone in my local Verizon shop (Sprint is just as bad).
In the UK, reception was rarely a problem, particularly in urban areas. In the US of A the situation is quite different. A few months ago I got a Cingular phone which didn't work in my apartment that was just two blocks away from the Cingular store and 3 blocks from downtown Santa Monica! Cingular charged me $40 just to get out of the contract).
Now I think I am finally getting close to the quality of phone and service that I took for granted in the UK in 1999, I have a Verizon T720.
Whoever is responsible for the cell phone mess in the US should be shot.
let's all cross our fingers that Powell Jr. is more successful with his negotiations with multi national powers, than his father has been this year.
personally, i'll believe it when i see it.
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
I was working on the IT of one of the telcos in Australia when MNP was being introduced. It was quite a big job and involved many systems. No longer could you identify the carrier of the service by looking at the prefix of the phone number. You had to store all ported numbers and which carrier they used. Many systems were built around the prefix assumption.
In Australia the government authority stated that porting of a mobile number must happen within 2 hours. At the time I heard that the time for a port in the UK took days.
Since mobile numbers in many countries have their own prefix (area code) for identification, with the introduction of MNP, you effectively have a number for life, no matter where you live in the country. I believe in North America this is not the case, as mobile numbers are tied to the location you live. I would only need to change my number if I ever moved to another country.
Number Portability A Bad Idea That You Get To Pay For Anyway
--
Number portability was always a bad idea. Everyone here should know of the concepts of IP addressing, routing tables, and DNS. DNS you take with you. You can change your ISP, and all of your IP addresses, but the names (DNS names) of hosts stay the same. IP addresses, such as those who Quest, AT&T, or WCOM might have provided to you, are non portable. You can't take them with you if you leave the provider providing the addresses (unless you bought them from ARIN/RIPE/APNIC directly).
IP network engineers know about bloat in routing tables, and how the efficient allocation of IP addresses to carriers and customers saves the day through route aggregation. That is, the route 10.0.1.0/24 and route 10.0.2.0/24 can be summarized as 10.0.1.0/23. Now, what would happen if you had to have a route for every single IP address? It would be impossible to maintain routing tables. That is why concurrent blocks are assigned to ISPs and organizations (or at least they try to). It takes at least 128MB of RAM to get BGP routing tables these days, and it could get worse over time. IPv6 might save the day, because of efficient allocation though. When IP addresses were initially given out without regard to the effects towards routing tables -- they had no idea.
But phone numbers are addresses! There is no concept of DNS, which would provide an abstract later. The result is that number portability will ruin the calling table that voice switches have. Area codes defined geographical areas, and NPA-XXX defined a central office, (such as 1-602-555-1234, 555 would be for the central office). But now, that will not be possible.
Thus, number portability is the road to ruin for voice networks. And that is why, in the future, a completely new dialing scheme will be necessary.
But the really really bad news is that you have been paying for number portability for YEARS, and getting nothing. And in the future, you will just get a bigger bill because of the costs that number portability is going to cause for voice providers.
Number portability is a bad idea, top to bottom. But I am just an IP engineer. I would love to hear what a telco/voice engineer has to say about this.
I've had T-Mobile for over a year now (and my 2nd line is right at a year) so I was thinking of switching. Why? Horrible customer service. The worse.
:(
So, from what yall know, will I at that date (or hopefully sooner) be able to take my cell phone # with me if I switch? I may have to wait till Nov to switch
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
What is this SIM thing you guys keep talking about in Europe?
To the best of my knowledge, the only removable things on my phone are they battery and the faceplate. If I want to change carriers, don't you have to buy a new phone at the same time?
And, I'm being semi-serious here. Explain to me how it works over there. Then, someone explain to me why we're so f*ck'd up here?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
A year and a half after I switched phone carriers, people still call my old phone number. And the new owner of that number, I'm told, gets really bitchy when they ask for me.
One thing I'm having problems understanding is Why should I even need a number visible on my phone at all? A phone number is an address, not a name, and that's why everyone's having these problems.
Labelling people with numbers is such a machine-centric view of the world, and with today's technology it shouldn't be necessary. The only reason it's still done is because legacy phone companies use legacy technology and their customers don't know enough about what's possible to demand better.
Realistically though if I want to phone my friend, I shouldn't need to remember some complex number, the length of which is beyond the borderline of the seven discrete blocks of information that psychological research has shown can comfortably be remembered by short term memory. For this reason, making a remappable name that looks like a number is almost as silly. I should be able to dial someone up by the name, if not something even easier, and it should work.
For a long time now, phones have been emulating this behaviour by having their own call directories where it's possible to store names and numbers. It's a horribly kludgey way to do things though because there's so much duplication of information with no clean way of synchronising it all. As soon as a person's address-number changes, everyone's phone is out of date.
Forget about the number remapping between phone companies for a moment, how long until we get some real improvements in the phone system?
Well, *I* got the joke, even if the moderators didn't.
So if I'm stuckw ith the same number year after year, I'll get hammered by more and more sales people year after year. I'd rather not have this (especially seeing that they are going to remove the privacy blocking cell phone numbers from private domain).. if they werent doing that, then I would be all for having the same number. What a scam, first we are exposed, now we're stuck with the same number..!?
Is the US finaly catching up then? Here in .BE, we have for fixed phones for a few years now, and for mobile phones since about 8 months, without any problems. As a matter of fact, I've changed my mobile provider a few weeks ago. It went very smooth: after I signed the contract with the new provider, we agreed on a date (which was in the contract), and on said date. A few days before the agreed date, I got my new SIM-card. On the actual date, I got a text message telling me to change the sim-card ...
I noticed someone here saying "now we don't know how much we are going to pay". Well, all Belgian mobile operators have the offer you a service (free of charge of cource) that emits "beeps" when you call a number that's on a different provider than yours. Secondly, there's a website where you can check, and a phone service as well...
Unless you're a prepaid customer, you'll probably end up waiting until your contract ends. Unless you enjoy obscene contract termination fees.
There's a lot of anti-Sims stuff on this site. Is the guy really that bad? He sounds like he can be a prick, but I really don't know...
If I recall correctly, it began in belgium 01/01/2003. Unfortunately, prices are sometimes higher when calling to another mobile network, and because we now can't see anymore by the number which network we are calling to, we have no certain idea of the price of our call. There is a number where you can request the provider for a certain phone number, but this is a serious hassle ofcourse.
Phone number portability in Australia has been around for quite some time now as well.
I decided to switch from Telstra to Vodafone almost a year ago and it was simply a matter of getting the new sim and advising Vodafone to proceed with the port...
Ha! I live in norway, and I just ported my cell phonenumber 3weeks ago.. the whole thing took 9 days. My new provider did all the work regarding the termination of my old subscription and sendt me a new sim card. 3 days into the prosess i got an email telling me when the new card would be actiwated (like 3 am on a monday).. all i had to do was swapping the sim's the following morning, and voila! i wasnt without coverage for 1 secound... whitch is good since i havent got a regular phone.
AFAIK, that's a GSM-only thing. My CDMA phone certainly doesn't have a SIM.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Here you go:
http://www.bridog.net/cellular/msl.txt
It's semi-evil, not true evil, but still enough to annoy me.
± 29 dB
The amount I was told was about $0.32 per month for most states, but it could vary from carrier to carrier. $0.32 seems reasonable to me, but I try not to complain about such things.
You could end up fooled : most providers charge more when you call other networks. Be sure to ask which networks your closest friends belong to. Having the same network number (e.g. +32 485 ...) doesn't mean that you belong to the same provider anymore.
Cheers.
Language is what makes us different from primitive animals, and bureaucrats.
Good to see you dumb Yanks catching up with the rest of us!
this has probably already been said (i really couldn't be bothered reading the entire thing...) but the us phone system must really, really suck. you lucky bastards have (so i hear) brilliant broadband infrastructure. ours sucks. the lack of cable tv during the 70s (as there was no boom like in the us) has meant that everything must be new - or use things like adsl (or whatever...). BUT for normal telephones...ours is the best. i never realised that you couldn't tell the difference between mobiles and landlines in the us...it's been like that since the beginning here. and number portability has been around for a while...carriers offer all sorts of incentives to swap now...like $100 worth of credit and whatnot. our numbering system had a small change in the past ten years: adding an extra digit to the front. it meant that there were millions more numbers, and that the system could contine to work well. now our numbers are country code: +61 (but you don't need this...although it appears on mobile numbers when you ring someone...) state code: 8 (well, that's the one for where i live...) area code: 332 (the exchange the call goes through) and then the final 4 digits: 9821 so that's +61 8332 9821 ! or for normal usage 8332 9821 simple. mobile numbers are more criptic, but you can *always* tell if it's a mobile: they all start with 04x - isn't australia just great? ;] lololol.
It seems that everyone is really excited about being able to retain their old phone number, but the main problem with changing carriers for most americans is the need to cough up a large sum of money (typically $150 - $250 depending on the provider). As long as this issue is not addressed, I honestly dont believe that many people will simply change their carriers even if they are dissatisfied with the service. I feel that this 'termination fee' is more monopolistic than any other tactic that the carriers have implemented and needs to be tackled first.
I work for a medium-sized cell phone company in the Chicagoland area. Number portability is actually going to happen in phases (I do not know the timeframes). The first phase is local portability. This means that if you are in your calling area (non-roaming), you can take your cell phone number with you if you change carriers (i.e.: if you live in Chicago and have AT&T, you can take your number to Cingular). The next phase will be regional portability. You'll be able take your Illinois cell number with you to Wisconsin. The last phase is that you can take your number with you anywhere in the U.S.A. (Caller identification becomes useless because although you'll see a New York number, the number may actually be from Nebraska, for example).
Unbeknowest to the consumer, their cell phones will actually contain two cell numbers associated with it. The first number is called the MDN (mobile dialed number). This is the actual number that the customer uses for their friends and family to call them. Think of it as "My Dialed Number." The next number is called the MSID and the customer never knows about this. It stands for mobile station ID, but think of it as "My Secret ID." Cell companies are still in charge of their pool of numbers they give out to new customers which is local to the given area. The MSID is the actual number that the cell towers will recognize for making or receiving the phone call. Thus, when a customer moves to Nebraska and wants to keep their number from New York, their cell number (MDN) will be a New York number, but the actual number that's being "used" is a Nebraska number (MSID) that was assigned by the sales agent from Nebraska.
This brings up another point. Cell phones older than 2 years will NOT work for portability. If a customer wants to port their number, they will have to buy the latest phone that is programmed for that. As stated earlier, these cell phones will need to contain two cell numbers in them: the one the customers know about and the one the cell towers know about.
I hope this helps!
Vince
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
This may seem a strange idea, but what about "Email address portability"?
.name TLD,: William@Smith.name, billy63@William.Smith.name)
This could be offered by a group of ISPs who competed to offer you dialup or broadband service, but kept your email address constant by sharing administration of the mail-servers for a set of generic domains (For eg: John.Smith@email.com. Or, using the
Email forwarding services like iname.com do exist, but that option suffers the same lack of competition as the "ISP-provided-email" option. i.e. If you switch your email forwarder (say due to a hike in annual fees), you lose your email address.
I see one enormous problem with this.
My old AT&T cell phone had a number in the Beverly Hills rate centre - it was the "local exchange" available for West Los Angeles subscribers.
Now, let's say I want to switch to T-Mobile. T-Mobile have numbers in the Santa Monica rate centre and in the Gardena rate centre ONLY.
Since the rule says that you can only port within a rate centre, I would still not be able to port my number from AT&T to T-Mobile.
This will mean two things: 1) people who want to switch to carriers with less-than-total market penetration (here that would mean Nextel and T-Mobile) will not be able to port their numbers, and 2) more and more numbers will be used up (thousands-block allocation notwithstanding) as the smaller carriers scramble to get numbers in each rate centre within an area code.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
We've got portable cell phone numbers in Denmark, it's been 2 years now.
/min) due to the competion which was enabled by portability.
Prices went down from 3-5 DKr/min to 1,10 DKr/min (thats near 0,15
This advantage far exceeds the extra routing-cost which is needed for portability.
-- From Denmark
woo hoo! For once we Aussies have one up on you everyone else! We've had MNP for some time and we don't pay a fee (or I don't think so). So why pay a fee??? The mobile phone companies make enough out of all of us as it is! THEY should pay for it!
Stop! Whoever crosseth the bridge of Death, must answer first
these questions three, ere the other side he see!
"What is your name?"
"Sir Brian of Bell."
"What is your quest?"
"I seek the Holy Grail."
"What are four lowercase letters that are not legal flag arguments
to the Berkeley UNIX version of `ls'?"
"I, er.... AIIIEEEEEE!"
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