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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)."
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.
"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
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.
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.
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
No kidding.
I have a friend who is a project manager at a "Major Wireless Carrier" who said that the reason it's not here yet is that it's "really hard".
OK, every country in the entire friggin WORLD has this except for the US. The only reason we DON'T have it is that the carriers didn't want to make it easy to switch over. It can't be that hard if most of Europe has it, because y'all in Europe have more cell phones than we do. Japan's got number portability, and they've got assloads more phones than we do. This isn't a matter of expense or difficulty, it's a matter of protecting wireless carrier's bottom lines at the expense of consumer expense.
For example, another friend of mine was really ticked at SprintPCS. But in order to change carriers, he'd have to get his business cards and stationery reprinted, at a fairly high expense. So he's locked in until this number portability thing happens, at which point I'm thinking he'll probably kick their sorry asses out.
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
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.
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 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 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...
Than you'll have the same service as we have in Belgium for more than a year. Welcome to the civilised world :-)
Mark
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?
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.
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
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
> It can't be that hard if most of Europe has it,
Actually - yes it can. It is technically complex and hard to impliment properly / reliably - It only seems easy because the problems have been solved.
There are some minor differences in the way that call routing works between GSM and the various USA systems. But these are generally small - they all sit on top of SS7 and getting calls through to the location is done by essentially the same Processes in the SS7 SCCP TCAP and MAP layers. If GSM can make it work then the USA will be able to too.
What is more of a problem is the lack of consistency in the way that number portability is implimented. SS7/SCCP/TCAP/MAP doesn't explicitly provide for portability - so it has to be "bolted on" and not every territory does it the same.
Sometimes you want to originate a call or send an SMS and you need to know which network hosts the handset. (Usually you want to do this because you're providing a service in a country (EG Hong Hong) where the carriers are always squabbling and won't neccesarily route your call through to the right network)
Anyway, some territories (eg HongKong) have implimented number portability by means of a centralised common database - and if you provide a service and have multiple trunks into each network (as we do) then you have to negoiate access to that Database and treat it as a whole extra layer before you even start connecting to the network proper. Even then there can be messy differences between territories in the detail of how these databases work.
Other places (EG the UK) do it completely different. Here there is an extra Database associated with every HLR ( Home Location Register - one of the key Databases involved with routing calls to mobiles). When a number is ported, the GTTS (Global Title Translation Service - converts phone numbers into the point codes which underly the SS7 network) in the originating network SCCP still returns the point code of the original operator's HLR - practically speaking it has to or the routing tables would become impossibly large. When that HLR receives a "sendRoutingInfo" message it first checks in its portability database and if the number has been ported elsewhere, then it forwards the message to the new HLR - which will query the current VLR and provide the routing info. This has the advantage that it is transparent to everyone else on the SS7 network , but has the disadvantage that if you actually want to know which network you're paying to receive the call - it's harder to find out. The other disadvantage of this system is the admin is more awkward. Potentially you could be relying on three different companies to make your network change work. All the UK phone companies are a bit of a admin. shambles even at the best of times.
We're busy designing and implimenting various SMS configured voice conferencing services - and this single issue is more complex than just about all the rest put together.
What will be interesting will be to see how the USA has decided to solve the problem. It will face essentially the same choices as countries with GSM - and the same tradeoffs.
AJB
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.
Not true. My plan, with t-mobile, allows me to call any other t-mobile caller at any time for free. Phoning other carriers will consume my monthly minutes if used during the week. Thus, with plans like these it's important to know which network you are dialling.
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.
There's a way to make the number people use to reach you independent of a specific phone.
Many land line providers offer a service called "group ringing" or "group hunting".
Basically, you give out a number for people to call. Calls to that number route to a list of phone numbers to reach you. You progam the list of numbers: your cell phone of the week, office phone, home phone, etc.
You answer the call on whatever phone you are closet to at the time. The person calling you doesn't notice anything different other than maybe one or two extra rings. Some variations on this feature allow the ability to roll back to voice mail if no one answers the call.
The individual phone numbers aren't visible to those people that are calling you, all you ever give out is the master phone number.
There are two variations to the service, simultaneous ringing or sequential ringing. Basically, do all phones ring at the same time, or ring in sequence.