Slashdot Mirror
Cell Phones Companies Fight Number Portability
andy1307 writes "The Washington Post is reporting that wireless companies are opposing mobile number portability. According to the law as it is being written, customers would be able to transfer wired phone numbers to a wireless service. Not surprisingly, Verizon is the wireless company opposing the law."
Not only am I going to try for first post, I'm also going to try and point out that us Europeans have had this for years...
If only global companies would look outside of national markets for best practice, consumers would have a much better life.
if(article.story.indexOf("phone")!=-1 && user.location.ToLower()=="usa"){
phone.advanceme
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T-mobile in europe supports number porting - no mention of them in the article? It'd be difficult for one part of the company to try and halt such changes, while other arms of the company are already using such processes.
...is a national area code not tied to area. This makes sense because if you're calling a Verizon customer, for example, you're connecting with their network locally anyway. From there it's all within Verizon's network, so the area code shouldn't make any difference. The only real use cell phone providers have for geographic area codes, is for marketing purposes.
The problem now is that while I have a national calling plan where calls anywhere in the US and Canada are the same price, people calling me from the next street may have to pay long distance charges. This is absurd -- though I live on the east coast, people calling me locally have to dial a California number. And keeping my number is important -- it's my established business and personal number, wherever I happen to be.
So, why can't we just have national area codes for cell phone users with national plans?
Damn, I think you just earned yourself the libertarian nomination for the 2004 presidential.
I had the same problem with emails.. Change ISP, and you have to change email accounts. Similar problem ,as your correspondance and cards all have to change. You also have to alert everybody that olduser@oldisp.com is now gone. Pretty much a pain in the ass.
/.ing ). My IP's can change ill it wants, I can simply use an auto-update daemon.
Well now, I purchased my own domain name and I run my own mail server. If somebody wants to email me, they aim it at user@mydomainname.com (my domain hidden to protect from
What I'm saying, is have the similar sort of dial-setup. You can either buy a phone redirection circuit, or if there's dealers out there, buy a redirection phone number.
Old style=
Caller => You
New style=
Caller => Redirection service => wherever you specify
My plan's sort of like DNS for phones.
Considering reading the article before commenting? Don't bother. They haven't done their homework. The reason they're fighting the number portability laws? Because it would increase their costs... I'll let the cognitive dissonance batter your brain a little bit on that one.
Lame, lame, lame mobile phone providers. Get a clue. Service your customers. Provide value for the money. How about more anytime minutes per month? Or how about if you don't use your anytime minutes this month, they roll over to next month?
Come on, people. Stop sitting comfortably on your piles of ill-gotten profits and serve the customers like you're supposed to be doing. I swear, the way our legislature is bending over and taking it from the corps in this country is astounding.
fifth sigma, inc.
...is that phone companies, pager companies, etc., buy numbers in blocks of 10,000 and have rights to them forever, so whether they're used or not they don't return to the pool. Because they hold your number they can hold you hostage. God forbid they should compete on service.
If we didn't have this situation, there would be no need for the constant splitting of area codes.
Er, yes your honour each customer who intends to keep his number due to crapp^H^H^H^H^H reasons, which we really don't understand will cost us 2$37.
Lawyers for the CTIA and Verizon Wireless claim the rule is unnecessary because competition for the nation's 144 million wireless subscribers remains robust.
Yes guvernor, we spent 230'000'000$ annually for lawyers and lobbying in order to fuck^H^H^H^H provide for better customer service...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Just think - the ability to keep numbers allows anyone to switch to the cheapest price plan du jour, until the price war bottoms out. Then what? Maybe certain companies (anyone? anyone? ) would have to stop competing on pure price and actually start to offer services valuable to customers, such as the ability to make and receive calls reliably.. the horror! (in fact, the telcos could even realize that if thousands of people in a certain area code are ditching, then perhaps it's time to buy a few more towers there?)
never underestimate the powers of condescension - It knows not the bounds of time or space
In Hong Kong, they have had it since the beginning.
The country code is +852, and mobile phone numbers always start with either 9 or 6. All the numbers are governed centrally in a pool by a regulatory body.
When you subscribe to a network, you would pay a surchange to the regulatory body for the "number", and then it belongs to the network you are subscribed to. When you change networks, you keep your old number but you have to pay about US$10 to the regulatory body to change your information.
In this way, there is better competition between operators (there are 7 in this small country!!), and the users are not bound in anyway to an operator that offers shitty service.
There is a flip-side, however. Here SMS'es between networks are charged at about USD 0.20, but SMS'es in the same network are charged USD 0.10. There is no way of determining whether your receipient is in the same network! Even if you know, they might have changed their mobile network...
Also, with MMS coming up, it gives additional problems if you do not know which network your receipient is in. But the networks are opening their MMS services for inter-network sending soon, so it would be solved (just like SMS'es).
Not sure which country you are in but most networks in the UK offer 'Anytime, Any network' with inclusive minutes. Once you have reached the limit then the extra call charges kick in but as long as you select a decent call package then you should be right. Orange offers a pretty good feature where you can pick and choose your number of minutes, txts, GPRS, etc. to customise your call plan.
[Please type your sig here.]
...and Australia is roughly the same size in area as the contiguous United States, so the argument that it is only due to small coverage for telcos in Europe (that some people have been posting) is hogwash.
Some more information:
http://www.aca.gov.au/consumer_info/publications/b rochures/mnp.htm
You can move phone numbers between GSM and CDMA in Australia as well as between Telcos. There are about four-five players competing for mobile telephony in Aus, but they have national reach and aren't fragmented like the mess in the USA.
Number portability and virtual networks is the key to a healthy and competitive cell market. I live in Norway, where we have two networks (Telenor (former state monopoly) and Netcom). These companies have the GSM infrastructure and rents out air time to virtual operators such as Chess, Sense, Carrot and You. Combine the vitual networks with law-mandatory number portability and you've got some good competition going on. The prices have gone down a bit after the portability was introduced. When there was only Telenor and Netcom, you had an effective oligopoly.
here in Canada, and I think one of the main issues here we're (as in slashdot) ignoring is the simple less sinister one: cost.
Number portability, atleast for us, is a major expensive pain in the @ss.
We are planning on moving towards number portabilty, because we feel it's ultimately good for everyone involved - new cutomers that move into our area can keep old numbers etc. etc. We also get a happier customer out of the deal, if he/she can choose us over another competitor simply because they can keep their phone number - we feel that will offset the cost of churn.
The problem is, billing systems need to be updated, massive changes in the switching equipment need to be maintained AND - we need cooperation from other Telco's. In Canada as well, there's the legal issues of satisfying the government, (CRTC), so unfourtunately everything moves at a snail's pace.
I'm not sure about other companies in the US, but I don't think it's a typical problem of the "huge corporations trying to screw the customers" in this case, which is often trumpeted by the majority of slashdotters. Basically a major rework of the phone system needs to be done throughot North America to make this work properly, and sadly this is going to take some time.
From the article...
"I would rather see our resources devoted to safety of life and protection of property rather than addressing regulations of convenience," said Brian Fontes, vice president for federal regulations for Cingular Wireless. "
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...the only reason I have not switched from Sprint is because I like my phone number altogether too much.
Those stupid 10,000 blocks are also one of the causes of the proliferation of area codes. I have already had to purchase new letterhead because of new area codes.
The FCC system now assigns phone companies blocks of 10,000 numbers; the phone companies do not pay for them. If the phone companies had to bid for them, maybe they would have a persuasive argument.
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
but jiggle-hork is . . . oh, right, nevermind
I have actually gotten telemarketers on my cell phone. I don't know what is worse... getting an SMS message(which on my current plan I get unlimited SMS msgs a month) or a Telemarketer bothering me.
Sure you can just say "well don't pick up" but if I don't tell them to take me off their call list they will keep calling.
yep, and that tin-foil beanie really suits you too
grow up.
Let's just play devil's advocate for a minute. In the UK it used to be the case that you could tell the mobile operator from the dialing code of the number, e.g. 07866 for Orange, 07788 for Vodafone. (This can still be done at UK Phone Information.) This was useful, since many tariffs give you free or cheaper calls to numbers belonging to the same operator. Since numbers became portable, you can no longer make an assumption as to the operator.
While it certainly an advantage for the consumer for his/her number to be portable, it may end up costing him/her more.
Not quite the same in the UK. As I understand it, in the UK you can transfer wireless numbers to other wireless providers and wired numbers to other wires (within an area). This means that area codes always give the area and 07.. numbers always give wireless. This fits broadly with the fact that in the UK, the caller picks up the extra cost for making a call to reach a wireless number rather than it being picked up by the call receiver (whether as a direct charge or bundled with the plan)
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What about this location tracking scheme in the US and this report?
You should read on the subject before you start calling security conscious people like me paranoid.
Number portability is a very good idea. Unfortunately, there's some real costs and problems involved in implementing it.
For instance, operators get large series of numbers. This can be blocks of tens of thousands to tens of millions of numbers, with a specific prefix. Just like Internet routing, those blocks (or prefixes, if you want to think that way) decide where a call goes.
Now, what happens when you want to make a number portable? Well, those blocks still exist. The problem is that whenever you make a phonecall, the connection goes to the operator who owns the block. That operator, in turn, looks up the number and decides what to do with it. If it's a number that's moved to another operator, they either redirect the connection, or establishes additional connections to the new operator (depending on the technology used). The costs of doing so is sometimes greater than just accepting a call to one of their own customers.
Now, add the cost of updating the exchanges, the billing systems, educating the staff and so on and you'll quickly realise that this is not a trivial task. Also remember that this adds a huge amount of complexity to the telephone system, a system that's already overly complex.
Compare this, for instance, with trying to implement portable IP-numbers. It's not the same thing (different technology among other things), but the complexity issues are similar.
Unlimited SMS shouldn't be an issue. They send the SMS to you. Sometimes they ask you to send one back but you shouldn't.
If they do call you, just do as you would at home and keep them on the line as long as possible, feeding them utterly bogus information. Either that or start chatting up the telemarketer, especially if they are the same sex as you.
"Not surprisingly, Verizon is the wireless company opposing the law."
I would cancel my Verzion phone as soon as this becomes law.
My number is so important to me that I am paying them 25/mo just to forward my number to my Nextel.
I don't use verizon service at all. This really does suck.
I think many others would love to avoid this service fee and keep their good number and choose providers that work best in their area.
The wireless market has becoming so saturated and too competitive, this won't help them in any way.
It would help us wireless users tho. I'm all for it.
Not sure where you are, but there may well me laws to assist you in handling the voice telemarketers...
Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day, but teach a man to phish...
A lot of people are complaining about the fact that in the United States, we only give out blocks of 10,000 numbers. That simply isn't true anymore. Most people don't realize this, but last November, all non-GSM (more on U.S. GSM in a sec) U.S. Cell companies 'split' their phone numbers into two identical numbers... one called the MDN (Mobile Directory Number, or Mobile Dialable Number), and the MIN (Mobile Identification Number). The MDN is what you actually dial when you call your friend on their cell phone, and the MIN is (sort of) what the call routes on (actually, it routes on a different number called the Local Routing Number or LRN, which is associated with the MIN, but I digress...).
Anyway, when the numbers got split, it because possible to dole out phone numbers in smaller blocks... if someone needs a block of 1000 numbers and it's in the same cost center (think long distance charges) as someone else who needs 1000 numbers, they can share the same block of 10000 MDNs and use different MINs with different LRNs. This whole process is called 'Number Pooling'.
All of this also allows for WNP. So essentially, the software is already doing all of the 'hard stuff' today... we've been using two phone numbers since last November. On Nov 24th 2003, you will be able to port your MDN. Your MIN will change. So your dialable number might go from Verizon to Cingular, but your MIN will change from a Verizon MIN to a Cingular MIN. You and your friends don't notice any difference... think of your dialable number like a pointer to a MIN.
Confused? See why Verizon doesn't want to do this? I think WNP is a good thing, but I barely understand this stuff, and I helped write the damned software that's supposed to do all this... imagine training hundreds of customer care staff on how this stuff works.
GSM in the U.S. is a little less scary 'cuz it was designed from the ground-up to route on a separate number from the dialable number (they call the diable number the MSISDN... forget what it stands for off the top of my head... it's pronounced 'Mizz-din'.) GSM routes (again, sort of) on the IMSI, which is programmed into the SIM card. It's kinda sorta like combining the ESN (serial number on the phone) and the LRN from the TDMA/CDMA world into one number.
Made sense to me. Why don't you lay off the crack pipe and reread the post, bucko.
When you roam now, the switch in the network you're in tells your home switch where you are & the phone call gets routed there. But with portability, you won't have a home switch and a call will have to go to a data base to find out who you're connected with, connect to that system, and then that system will look for where you are. Currently, the call is just connected to your system & it looks you up.
The real problem occurs when you are roaming & the call originates locally, because until that data base is in place, nationally, the local phone company doesn't know you are right next door & has to find out who you are hooked up with & send the call to them. Now, the phone company knows that if you have a Cingular number, Cingular knows where you are.
So, for privacy reasons, number portability may not be as good as it sounds at face value.
US 280 million people
Australia 20 million
It is possible to use least-cost-routing to find the cheapest call reseller by the dialling code. Unfortunately, if the dialling code can relate to more than one company, then LCR can't work unless you can program in 'exceptions'.
See my journal, I write things there
I am sorry, but WHEN did HongKong became a "small country"? Last I checked, it was an SAR (special administrative region) of the People's Republic of China - in fact they were complaining that the disease SARS should be renamed to "shock flu" or something because it "undermines the name of the territory." Before that, I seem to remember that Hong Kong was a colony of G.Britain...
While a country code is amusing, I would hardly think it would be a definitive reason to call Hong Kong a "country."
Next thing you know you'll be calling Taiwan a country too. [/sarcasm] (btw, WHO (world health org) apparently does not recognize the soverignity of Taiwan - when refering to it, they always say "the province of Taiwan," or something to that extent).
And I always thought that China Telecom or Unicom (the big gov't sponsored phone companies) are all over hong kong. Or so I thought... wouldn't be surprised if there are much fewer than 7 soon.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The fact that telephones have numbers at all in the digital age seems silly. Well established psychological research has shown a very long time ago that people's short term memory isn't good at dealing with big numbers. The whole concept of using phone numbers to call people goes against usability principles, yet there doesn't seem to be a serious effort to get rid of them in most places. It's not just legacy technology, it's legacy industrial age thinking.
Firstly, telephones shouldn't normally be the addressee. People should be the addressee. Secondly, people shouldn't have to have numbers, they should have names.
Many phones already try to emulate names by providing calling directories, and it's a real hack. I don't know the numbers for many of my friends because I rely on my phone to hide it, and I only interact with the names to call people. I hate to think what'd happen if I lost my phone, though. Also when someones phone number/address changes, it really messes things up for everyone who knows them.
So how long is it going to be before digital phones and digital networks actually do away with numbers altogether, in a way where other people can change their phone's address without everyone else having to know or care? Obviously there would be numbers in the system somewhere, but they shouldn't be needed in a user interface any more than the primary key of a typical database table is needed.
BTW, I've never used the email address supplied by my ISP, nor any free email hosting. In my case, the email is hosted with my web-hosting, and it doesn't really cost me anything because this is being shared virtual host-wise with a close contact. The bottom line is that I own the domain for any email address I use (for myself, and of course my employer would own the domain for work email addresses).
... and redirect it to your cell phone's number. Sure, you'll pay a lot per minute for calls on the toll-free number, but them's the breaks. You'd pay just as much for a "national area code" like you're talking about, I bet.
Heck, if your cell phone provider (or its parent telco) can provide toll-free numbers as well, they may give you a discount for having another service with them already (your cell phone plan). It wouldn't hurt to ask.
Utilizing magnetic schemata since
The FCC has ruled a long time ago that telemarketers may not call cell phones because cell phone customers would have to pay for the minutes. If a telemarketer calls you on your cell phone, you have a good chance in seeing some $$$ by filing a complaint with the FCC or taking it to court.
"Light is faster than sound." - "Is that why people tend to look bright until you hear them speak?"
I'm a college student living in New York state, but I'm from Massachusetts. My friends and family back is MA can call me in NY as a local call because that's where my cell phone number is based in my hometown.
Granted it'd be nice for everyone to be able to call me as a local call, but cell phones have to join the land lines somewhere, and if the call doesn't originate nearby, thats long distance. Granted we could redesign the cell networks for multiple entry points, but who thinks they will invest to benefit consumers?
CitrusTV (http://www.citrustv.net): the Nation's Oldest & Largest Entirely Student-Run Television Station
This is only an issue in the UK because you have to pay extra to call a cellphone. In the US this isn't the case; a phone is a phone-- knowing whether it's mobile or landline is academic (and sometimes it's convenient to be able to pretend that you're in an office using a real phone rather than out at a restaurant.)
Also, from what I understand, in Europe you can pay different per-minute charges calling people on different mobile networks. Without any more info in the prefix, is there any way to tell how much you're being charged for a particular call?
I am relatively stuck with Cingular because my phone number is the same as the Apple Computer 1-800 number, except with my area code. It has become my gimmick to help people remember me who I can't hand out a business card to. ( I simply say my number is Dah Dah Dah APPLE) That said, I have made sure that all my friends and family got cell phones long ago from AT&T, Verizon, etc and chose the last four numbers as 2775 as well - so if I ever am forced to switch (until this passes) I have options. However, since Bellsouth Mobility became Cingular I have been very satisfied with them and have even been able to become a service distributor because I have, over the last year, been able to sell 20+ T68i cellphones to my customers.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
The phone companies need to stop the turn over on cell phone number, and have about a 6 month period where the number is not active. Then they need to include that nice little greeting that will tell you what the number has been changed too, even if its with a different carrier. I know every time I have switched my land line when I have moved they have always given me the option to put whatever number I want on that little message people get. I do like the idea of number portability, but there definetly needs to be a system of penalities for switching too often. The reason is, I know some people would switch carriers every month or 2, and I do think that is a bit unfair to the market.
And you can tell these companies are competitive by their refusal to invest in long names.
We have to pay an additional $1.75 per MONTH for this new "number portability". Listen, at the end of the day, I don't feel bound to my cell phone number. Hell, it helps me weed out the people that I don't want to have it. I think this should be an option for each consumer -- you make the decision when you sign up, as to whether or not you want to keep that number, not some mandate across the board. And, as a whamy, if you want to keep your number when you change providers, you pay $1.75 x [number-of-months-you-have-had-that-number-in-serv ice].
Think about it -- it's another $21.00 a year. It's really not worth it. So now, we have another new law and new tax -- how convenient.
we've been thinking of ditching our pathetic Sprint phones (which never have a consistent digital signal) for Verizon. The only thing holding us back is the fact that we want to keep our phone numbers. Maybe I should call Verizon and tell them that they gain two customers the day this goes into effect?
Our (US) government was designed to be responsive to the needs of money rather than blood (aristocracy), as had been the case before that. So this should not really astound you -- everything is working perfectly! Really!
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
Isn't that anticompetetive behavior on their part? Lobbying to pass/kill a law that directly affects competition in your market? Where's the DOJ? :-)
a few people have said it here already, but to be redundant, its all about competition. the carriers know that number portability will open up the market to a new level of equality. "I don't like Provider A, I'll try B now"...
The unfortunate reality is that this would be BEST for the consumers in the end, and in the end of that be best for the companies as well.
Competition breeds improvments.
... we've been PAYING for movable phone numbers for how long now? WHERE THE FUCK IS IT?
:/
Otherwise, I WANT A REFUND, WITH INTEREST!!!!!!!!!!!
This shit threatens to disrupt my otherwise mellow demeanor
Remember, it's the prefixes that tell tele-marketers that they can't call your cell phone... If you can take your wired prefix to your cell phone, then you will loose a valuable tool in combating them...!
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Just pointing out, in the US there are no cross network charges. People pay a per-minute outgoing charge defined by the carrier they signed up with irrespective of whom they are calling. Cellphone owners pay the same to send or recieve calls as defined by their carrier. This leads to a small degree of double-billing, but when comparing 5c per minute landline long distance vs 60c per minute cell times, the billing is academic.
But the cell phone industry in the US is a scam. Here's how it works. First off, you estimate your usage... be it 100 minutes, 400 minutes, or 1,000 minutes. If you are too high you are charged every month for minutes you don't use. If you are too low... and you really don't want to be too low... you spend about 75c per minute. 300 and 500 minutes at the beginning of the month might be 20 and 30 dollars, but at the end of the month a 300 minute plan going to 500 minutes will cost you 170 dollars.
That's not all. Going from local to state-wide to nation-wide roaming might cost 5 - 10 dollars per month in advance, but if you take a trip outside your calling area, and give a loved one two 30 minute update calls, expect to pay an extra 40 dollars. Larger calling areas don't necessarily mean no roaming as companies have implemented plans with off-network roaming in your home calling area... that dead zone at your favorite resturant now costs 40-60c per minute.
They also charge for long-distance, which is an example of the aformentioned double-dipping. If a person is calling you, they are paying long distance to reach you (5-15c per minute), but you are paying long distance charges to recieve the call too (15-25c per minute). Thankfully many cellular companies have plans that include this "service" for a small fee, though the fact of the matter is that they just want your money.
To lure people into using their cellphones more frequently, all carriers offer promotional night and weekend minutes. The night time has slowly crept from 6PM to 9PM, and the morning from 9AM to 6AM, but the offer is valid... usually for a limited time. AT&T is famous for cutting off promotional night and weekend minutes when a contract expires without telling the customer, which generally leads to one multi-hundred dollar bill per customer.
The upsetting thing is that of course this is all a paper exercise. There is no resource that is allocated at the beginning of the month, no bandwidth that your carrier has to purchase at truly tremendous rates if you use more than your allotted space. They don't have to send a lackey from New York to Boston to buy emergency extra air time from a carrier there. It's just a form of billing, and nobody would put up with it in any other industry.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation. The article cites the %25 turnover rate as a sign of healthy competition, but numbers that high are a sign of very unhappy customers. I don't know anyone who owns a cellular phone and who hasn't been hit with at least one ludicrously high bill... $100 dollar bills are common. And while friendly, support always refuses to do anything about it except bump you up to a more expensive plan for the coming months so that you can hope it doesn't happen again... of course when you move up a plan you automatically make another one-year contract so that you can't join that ticked-off %25 churn without paying the hefty "cancelation" fees to pay for services not rendered.
Cellular companies don't want anything that would allow people to leave because they know they treat us badly, plain and simple.
The ______ Agenda
No Seriously, the claim by the wireless companies that it will do little to competition is just rediculously underestimated. It makes switching phone services easier and more attractive to consumers, thus increasing competition. How will their costs also be raised? Assuming the number-portability system is implemented and is easy to use by telephone companies (I'm not a phone guru, I don't know myself), labor won't be significantly increased, they might have to buy a computer or something to use the new system... the costs will in all likelyhood be minimal (If someone can refute this I'm all ears, that was those were the only costs I could think of).Personally I can't wait to port my number out of this horrible U.S. Cellular contract I'm in.
Sure, maybe my point of view is biased because I'm an unhappy consumer with my phone plan. But changing my cell phone number would be a headache to both my clients and my family/friends, and this (and the 2 months i still have left on my 2-year contract) is the reason I haven't switched cell phone contracts yet.
You're taught in MicroEconomics 101 that perfect competition exists when a product is homogeneus among vendors and there are many vendors in the market. By making the numbers portable to different vendors, the product (airtime in this case) is only becoming more homogeneus. Hopefully the courts will realize the phone companies claims to be bullshit and throw them out soon enough.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Do you know what really pisses me off? For the last two years I have been paying $3 a month on my phone bill for "Number Portability Charge". Whenever I have actually tried to "port" my number there is always a reason why it can't be done.
I'm sick and tired of telcos. This month I am moving to a new home so I did some research into VoIP. I found a service from Vonage which allows me to setup a VoIP connection to a POTS system over broadband. It is SIP and H323 compatible. It costs only $39.99 a month and gives me unlimited free calls everywhere in the US and Canada, anytime. Not only that, but because it isn't classified as a communications service there are no surcharges. Just for comparison, Verizon offers a similar flat fee package for $64.99. The taxes and surcharges that they conveniently separate from the price add another $40 per month.
Good riddance...
Everybody knows the boat is sinking
Everybody knows that the captain lies
great track, great group...
The scenario described by you has not existed in the US for at least several years. (Well, all except the number portability).
Right now, most carriers give you about 300 anytime minutes and several thousands of night/weekend minutes as part of their base package, which usually costs about $35.00 a month. This includes the cost of subsidizing the phone. That Motorola phone that your purchased for 19.99 from Verizon probably cost the company $200.00 or more.
This usually includes nationwide roaming, sometimes international roaming. Right now, Verizon gives you seamless US/Canada roaming. Furthermore, most carriers give you several hundred "mobile-to-mobile", anytime minutes and several thousand, mobile-to-mobile night and weekend minutes. I belive other carriers give you comparable deals.
As to number portability, I really have no idea about what is involved here technically. Maybe more knowledgeable people can chime in. But, suffice to say, I and many of my friends have changed services several times over the years and number portability was really never a consideration. Of course, it would be nice to have.
BTW, the carriers have good reason for not giving people "all you can eat" service during the daytime. Unlike wireline, wireless customers use a shared resource. A few bandwidth hogs can make a cell system completely unuseable.
Magnus.
I worked a 7 month contract with a not to be named Cellular phone company and it is clear WLNP is not ready for prime time. The joke around the office is that WLNP stands for Wireless Lusers not portable..
All these companies have to connect up and figure a way to make it work and believe me they are trying but it seems a difficult task at best.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Is it me or did everyone get that article surrounded by Verizon Flash Ads? .. I think that's a little bias but hey it might be just me :p
Just Limin' Mon
We should add a new DNS record type for international telephone numbers. It'd be reasonably easy to have a DNS gateway over cellphone networks so that phones can resolve the phone number from a name before dialling.
Sure, it would be harder to enter the number the first time on a numeric keypad, but you'd store the name in your phone's memory so that you only have to type it once, and those with phones with QWERTY keyboards would be set!
It sure would be nice to be able to dial sales.somecompany.com rather than having to look up their number first. The main benefit, though, is the abstraction -- people can change their numbers and only be out of touch for the time it takes for the DNS record to expire.
The benefit of using a separate record type is that, like with MX records, it could coexist with other record types so that, for example, support.ibm.com could resolve to both an IP address and a telephone number.
I'm sure some company would soon step in with cheap 'catchy' phone hostnames in similar vein to free, throwaway email for those who don't have the know-how, desire or funds to run their own domain.
Why DNS? Because it's already there, and it works well.
This is inaccurate. ". AT&T is famous for cutting off promotional night and weekend minutes when a contract expires without telling the customer, which generally leads to one multi-hundred dollar bill per customer."
Wrong.
People simply don't read their bill. That's all there is to it. The promotion expiration date is clearly stated on the 3 invoices prior to the promotion expiration date. When people sign agreements, they're made aware of the promotion end dates. Some 3rd party resellers screw this up and don't tell people, but they're not supposed to.
When I worked for AT&T, we would simply re-rate the invoice for customers that were unaware of expiring promotions, ensuring that they were not billed for airtime that they should have had. We also educated them to READ THE BILL and be aware of promotion expiration dates.
WNP is a huge undertaking for cell carriers as it requires major changes to the cell towers, cell phones, and other infrastructure. There is little to no return on investment. But then again, who's fault is that? It would be the cell carriers because WNP was conceived many years before. It sounds like they weren't very proactive in trying to get this done and now companies like Verizon are trying to block it.
Vince
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
Which part of what I said is incorrect?
ATT charges
3/kb Addt'l Data Charge
45/min Addt'l Airtime
20/min Long Distance
20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance
69/min National Roaming Rate
$36.00 Activation Fee
$19.95 Monthly Fee
for the basic local plan, with 45 included minutes, up to
3/kb Addt'l Data Charge
25/min Addt'l Airtime
00/min Long Distance
20/min Off Network Domestic Long Distance
69/min National Roaming Rate
$36.00 Activation Fee
$299.00 Monthly Fee
for the advanced local plan, with 4,800 minutes.
AT&T has 10 tracks, Next-Gen, Multi-Band, and Digital plans for Local (roaming out of state), National(roaming off network), Digital One Rate (no roaming, no Next-Gen option yet), plus the mLife shared plans and prepaid plans. T-mobile has National, Regional, Family, and Sidekick rate plans, some with unlimited T-Mobile to T-Mobile minutes and most without. National plans feature unlimited weekend but unlimited night minutes for a fee, regoinal plans feature no additional weekend minutes. The T-mobile bandwidth starts at unlimited, but becomes 15MB per month with $3.50 each additional MB. Verizon features nine National, Local, and Express network tracks, some with long distance included and some without. The Promotional Choice(tm) Family SharePlan(tm) has 300 shared, 250 mobile-to-mobile minutes with 45c overcost and unlimited night and weekend, plus 4.99 monthly for 1000 additional mobile to mobile and 100 shared bonus minutes for 34.99 (39.98 after additionals). Sprint thankfully only has two tracks, "free and clear with vision" and "free and clear without vision." The base plans do not include pcs to pcs minutes, but the advanced plans do. There is no state-to-state roaming, but all off-network roaming calls are 50c per minute with a 25c per minute long-distance charge.
The cost of subsidizing my Nokia phone was 150.00, but that was 3 years ago. Considering my minimum monthly bill is $50, over the span of 3 years the cost of the phone is trivial. Still, the subsidizing of a phone is no excuse to create an artificial billing system that feels more like a vegas crapshoot or russian roulette than a satisfying business relationship. I'm sure even you have gotten screwed at one point or another... Why put up with that? Why defend that? The perks they give us (like mobile-to-mobile minutes)to counterbalance the way they exploit us should be a sign of just how much they exploit us.
All I want is a billing system that charges me Xc per minute anytime to anyone, with X/2c per minute nights / weekends. Is straight billing so hard or so wrong?
The ______ Agenda
since it eludes some people's comprehension, however, I'll elaborate. Phone companies are not in the business of protecting human life or private property. They're in the fucking business of providing fucking phone service! Can't you fucking see that??? Moron....
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
The difference is a key problem --
Phone calls are metered, not flat rate
like Internet service. Flat rate Internet
service is wonderful, where data can be
forwarded with no cost penalty.
Exactly. If those 3000 cell-to-cell minutes are now 'free', and you were changed for them before, obviously the phone company can afford to 'give' them to you and still make money. How much were you overcharged before? And if not, where has the overcharge moved to? Probably shifted to a different group of subscribers.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Well, I dunno about AT&T, but, I'm with Sprint PCS, and I pay a monthly fee, and get X number of anytime, anywhere minutes...their network is in all the areas I travel....AZ, TX, AR, LA, TN, GA...etc. I don't get charged extra for calling or receiving calls when I'm out of my normal area. The only time I get charged extra is A) When I overrun my minutes, which has only happened once. B) When I occasionally hit an area where I'm out of Sprints digital coverage...usually on the open road in LONG stretches between cities...and I have to go with analog...I've never had to do this...I keep my phone switched to digital only, but, can switch to analog in an emergency. Sounds like you need to change plans/carriers....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
All I want is a billing system that charges me Xc per minute anytime to anyone, with X/2c per minute nights / weekends. Is straight billing so hard or so wrong?
Huh? You want to pay by the minute? Nothing else charges by the minute except for phones.
Why is it that people's phone charges can be significantly more than electricity bills? The phone industry is a complete scam, with 1000 different ways to get ripped off.
I had a cell phone once. I got it only because I was unemployed and didn't have a permanent residence, and needed a stable phone # for job searches. Then I got a gf. Then I got a $400 bill. Then I got a permanant residence with a land line, and threw the cell in the trash.
Now I have a land line with no long distance carrier and I use a phone card from costco that costs $20 for 570 minutes (~ 3.5c/min) with no monthly charge. My employer gets to pay for my cell phone. I will never own a personal cell phone again unless its $20-30 a month flat rate like my home phone.
They are fighting it because they know if you have to change your number when you switch carriers you will be less likely to switch.
Perhaps the idea of phone numbers is outdated, and we need something different. Think like a DNS server for phone numbers, and the phone number as an IP address. You would punch in something like Bob Smith, and the phone company or whatever would look up the number and dial it for you. You could easily change numbers, and people wouldn't even have to know about it. Just like if a web server changes IP addresses, it's not a big deal (usually) - just need a change in the DNS server.
There are other issues, like would people accept it, what to do about the 100,000 Bob Smiths out there, and how could one implement this over the existing network?
The only real practical solution I can see without starting over from scratch would be to have "smart" phones with modems in them, that could talk to the computers in the phone companies. Then if I change my number, the smart phones would all get the new information from the phone companies, and quitely change the speed-dial memories without the user even knowing. But this brings up other problems. Do you really want the phone company to know everyone you have programmed in speed-dial?
Heh. "Doing so would increase costs, and not help competition."
Whatever dude. Doing this would be so much easier for the consumer, because then we could stick with just one number for the rest of our lives. It also improves competition, because then the consumer doesn't have to care about having to stay with a particular company to retain a phone number.
Stupid rich fucktards trying to make even more money by lying out of their asses. :-)
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
I was looking for this comment to mod up, but nobody's made it yet.
I have 2 basic questions. The first is for the cell providers: why do you encourage your customers to switch providers by offering aggressive discounts on handsets ONLY to new subscribers? Why not reward your existing customer base with even deeper discounts on handsets? The way I see it, AT&T seems to think that my number is worth at least $600 to me. They're wrong.
The second question is: Will number portability force the providers to behave the way I think they should, by offering discounts on handsets to existing customers to encourage loyalty rather than restricting discounts to new activations, to entice customers away from competitors' plans?
I'm in Oakland, CA. Part of my job is to negotiate wireless contracts for healthcare providers, and as a part of making sure we do a good job, we have a satisfaction survey we give to all our customers. This survey asks people how happy they are with their cell service/handset/calling features/customer service from the wireless provider. And the results we have consistently seen for the past 9 months are: as long as you can get service in the places you need it (home, grocery, work, airport, freeway between...) then the providers are basically interchangeable. The pricing and available minutes are very very very close to identical (the one standout is that sprint is still offering "unlimited" data service, while everyone else has data plans that bill by the kb- but it's CDMA2k instead of GPRS, and you can't send SMS messages yet via CDMA2k, so... it's basically unlimited crap).
In the bay area, in LA, in Seattle, in Portland, nobody gives a tinker's damn whether they're on cingular or T-mobile or AT&T or verizon or Sprint. The % of complaints about poor service are very similar, and the locations of "black holes" (like inside a concrete box building full of rebar in the walls) are also surprisingly similar.
all anyone cares about is the handset- people choose providers based on how cool the phones are, and how much of a rebate they can get from the provider for that handset in the market they're in. Now, this makes sense to me, because I really want a Treo 270 or 300, but i want to keep my AT&T number. Right now, my options are
1) keep my AT&T number, buy the Treo 270 direct from Handspring, for $700.00 USD (!!!) with no rebates, because I'm not activating new service, buy a SIM from AT&T, don't tell them what phone I'm going to use it in (because AT&T doesn't support the treo yet) and increase my usage plan to pay for the GPRS data connection.
2) give up the AT&T number, in favor of one from Cingular or T-Moblie, and buy the Treo 270 with GPRS from Amazon for $500 less, or
3) give up the AT&T number, in favor of one from Sprint, and buy the Treo 300 from Amazon for $550 less than I would have to pay for the same functionality on AT&T.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation.
Yeah, but they make you pay for the priveledge. With Pacbell, you have to decide when you first get your phone whether you want to be able to take that number with you when you move. And if you do, they tack on an "portability" charge of a few extra dollars a month. Over time, that can really add up.
Incidentally, what does it mean, "kill the white knight"?
It is an unrelated sig. It is a call to liberate one's self from relying upon the romantic hope that a chivalrous white knight will rescue you and to get out and do it yourself. Originally a feminist slogan from the west coast, it has become equally applicable to men waiting for that job offer they never applied for, children waiting for that college offer they hope will substitute for a place in life, and housewives waiting for life to fall into their laps.
The white knight is dangerous, because many have wasted their lives waiting for him.
The ______ Agenda
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough since you're not the only person to have brought that up.
Obviously people's first and last names don't provide a unique identifier, but that doesn't mean we should need to resort to an obscure technologically-generated number to identify a person.
DNS is a much better system than the phone system. People remember names instead of IP numbers. What this whole slashdot discussion seems to be promoting is replacing static IP addresses with some variant of a dynamic IP number that has more even digits and can move with people dynamically.
I have a Sprint PCS phone. I pay $30 per month. I have: 650 anytime minutes, unlimited mobile-to-mobile minutes, 3000 night and weekend minutes starting at 8 pm, FIMF, free long-distance. I use calling card to call internationally for 2-3 cents a minutes using a New York local number (long distance is free, remember?)My basic landline from baby Bell was $27 a month; long distance extra. I cut them off...They keep on sending me letters to come back. Will I ever consider them? Are you kidding?
If, as stated in the article, number portability goes through and landline numbers can be moved to mobile phones and vice versa, what will stop the telemarketers from calling my cell phone?