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Yet More on Cellular Number Portability
RadBlock writes "The Wireless Supersite has posted an interesting column analyzing number portability. Wireless carriers have been stalling on the availablity of number portability for years now. The final deadline is supposed to be in November, and it will allow you to keep your wireless phone number when you change carriers (one number for life... the ultimate!)"
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sometimes I look forward to leaving certain phone numbers behind.
Once someone knows your number, changing it's the only way get it away from them. Can't really block any single person from fucking with your phone number, they can always call from a different place.
Sounds like just another way to add a surcharge to our phone bills. Like we need another.
Wow, must be Friday, I'm bitter and sarcastic... time for beer and wings!
I just got a new cell phone number, now all the people I don't want calling me anymore can't. ;-)
I think having a number would be cool, but there are other implications. Imagine the privacy concerns of not changing your number, I understand you could get a new number if you really wanted one, but the issue still exists. Another issues is routing of the call and how much more work this would add for the phone company that they would be willing to charge you more for. In my opinion they charge to much already.
This is only news in the US. For around two years (Think it's two years) people in Denmark have been able to move their number from one phone company to another, wireless or non-wireless, makes no difference. Only problem is that it's nolonger possible to tell if your calling a mobil or a regular phone.
Damn, this could allow all those revengeful ex-girlfriends and one night stands to potentially track me down!
On a serious note though. Say someone totally bails on a large bill that has accumulate with one carrier and moves to another carrier for new service. Would you have the ability to keep the same number still?
We've gone through two area code splits here in Minneapolis -- 612/651 first, and then 768/612/952 later.
Would cell number portability slow this kind of thing down? I can't help but think that each cell provider switch ties up two numbers for at least a month or so as one number gradually expires and gets put back into the re-use bin.
With this there'd be more slack in the system as providers wouldn't need as much of a supply of numbers for new customers, as some (high?) percentage could be expected to keep their numbers.
yes, but there are two concerns:
1) having a mandated monthly portability surcharge -- if it's a charge at the time you transfer carriers, then it's very reasonable (which, i understand, is how it's done in parts (all?) of europe
2) as it stands now, telemarketers cannot call my cell #. if portability makes it such that cell vs. landline is no longer easily identifyable and they can start calling me, i'm going to be one VERY unhappy camper. i dumped a landline in favor of a cell phone only awhile ago. and avoiding commercial solicitation was a significant reason for doing so.
so, while i agree, options are good. if you take away my option to not pay for portability and you take away my option to be free of telemarketers and their ilk, then i don't want the option to keep my number. it's not an even trade!
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I don't know why they still keep going through these convolutions trying to make "cel phones" - which are powerful networking devices - behave like traditional telephones.
The cel companies should employ modern network standards along the lines of IPv6, DHCP, and ZeroConf. When you turn on your phone you're on the network. Who else is on the network? Your phone tells you. Want to call someone? Select their name from your buddy list. All this archaic ten-digit dialing, ringing, answering, messaging is all going to seem very quaint in ten years....
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I suppose the cellular providers are worried that customers will jump ship to competitors if they were able to keep their phone numbers. But, when the customers switch, they switch to OTHER cellular providers.... which means that non-customers are just as able to switch TO thier company.
The only valid concern I can think of is that preventing users from keeping their number is that they keep their revenues consistent. If users switched all the time, they wouldn't be as able to dependably predict the next quarter's revenues. Though, I doubt it would fluctuate that much. It leaves them open to being overtaken by better competitors, but it equally allows them to steal away the other guy's users. (I guess they don't have much self-confidence)
That is like saying "buying" is bad and "selling" is good, when they are just two sides of the same transaction.
Recently the company I work for changed from the ILEC to a CLEC that only provided service within our LATA, of course we wanted to keep our existing number. Certain other people were not able to call in, we could call out but they couldn't call us, it turns out companies that used MCI as their IXC were the ones who couldn't call us. MCI had a problem with their LIDB. You are going to need to know this stuff to diagnose these problems. And you think service is bad now
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perhaps i'm just paranoid, but wouldn't this make trcking people by a single number (by the government, the people pushing for this initiative) much more easily automated?
i assume this eternal number would be optional, but the number of people who would do it for convenience alone would save a lot of time for info trackers.
eh?
As I said, it seems like a silly concept. But think back. If you havn't said it yourself, I'm sure you might know someone that said "I'd change carriers...but then I'll have to track everyone down and tell them my new number". The same sorta holds true for e-mail/ISPs as well. It's a big pain in the ass to change phone numbers...if we didn't have to worry about it, we wouldn't have any problem switching carriers if their service sucked.