Slashdot Mirror
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!)"
Go Calculate Something
one number for life... the ultimate!
I would say sex with twins is the ultimate, but hey, we all have priorities.
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. ;-)
Now I can get my 555-FARK phone number.
Er, wait. Wrong website.
g
Other countries are already doing this for a year or two now. Take Germany. The carrier is allowed to charge you a fee (something like 25-50 euros), which often gets comp'ed by the new carrier.
This has nothing to do with technology. It's solved. It's carriers trying to keep customers hostage. Nothing more.
Poof.
one number for life... the ultimate!
... like (663) 244-7467 ... aka (ONE) BIG-PIMP
It's only the ultimate if you get a cool number
(Score:-1, Wrong)
If I could keep my number, my incentive to stay with RipOff Cellular goes down, and I'm more likely to switch to UselessMinutes Wireless Inc.
In the end, there's probably just as many people who want to switch from A to B as want to switch from B to A. But even though the numbers of subscribers might remain fairly steady, it is more expensive to lose one customer and gain another than to just keep one.
"(one number for life... the ultimate!)"
One number to find you.
One number for life.
One number for the world to call
And in the darkness (and light, and evening, and morning) bind you.
Nikkos
For the past four or five years, an increasing number of nickel-and-time charges have been appearing on my phone bill... every time I'd ask Verizon about it they would say basically "The FCC made me do it."
Well, one of those numbers was supposed to be specifically to provide phone number portability if I change carriers.
So if I'm not getting phone number portability, why am being charged for it?
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.
Number portability won't give the consumer much really. If you are displeased with the service of one company and decide to change carriers, you also have to acquire a new phone as well as a new number. Sure, that's not a problem when phones are free or only $0.01. But, when you start throwing in these unlimited local services that don't give away their phones, it can be costly to change carriers just because of the equipment change.
I would really hate it if we got this in my country... i mean, if you cant instantly tell the network when you look at the number, how will i know the price of the phone call in advance? :|
Not everyone is rich enough not to worry about such things you know. I can call my girlfriend for 5 cents, but calling people on other networks would cost me 30 cents per minute!
And that's at the discounted rate for people in my "top 10" list... most people can only afford 10 or 20 euros per month of cell phone usage and if they run out they wont put more money in it until the end of the month comes and they get paid.
We would have to start writing the network's name together with the phone number, it would just be confusing. Unless cell phones start automating the network identification in some way.
Why are you so attached to your phone number anyway? I dont see people screaming for email adress portability, or home adress portability or anything like that. Actually I never saw anyone complain about changing phone numbers either.
I'm on my third phone number and I lost count of all the email adresses I've had in my 7 years of mobile and internet usage. Changing has never been a problem for me *shrugs*
I have noticed that some people are complaining, "But if I always have the same phone number, then I can't avoid all those pesky telemarketers/ex-girlfriends/stalkers/parents/lawy ers/etc."
What these people are ignoring is that you merely have the choice to keep the same number - not an obligation. If it behooves you to keep the same number, you may do so; if not, you can drop the number just like you do now.
Giving the public more options is a "Good Thing."
Here's an interesting article that talks about how Telemarketers feel about number portability. Telephone Consumer Protection Act
The Federal Communication Commission will require wireless carriers in the 100 largest cities to support local number portability beginning November 24, 2003.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans automated predictive dialer calling to any phone number where the recipients pay call costs (like cell phones).
Telemarketers fear they may inadvertently reach a cell number and violate the TCPA because of the number portability. Telemarketers avoid doing so currently because carriers assign specific area codes or digits to wireless numbers; dialers then do not ring those numbers
I actually look forward to changing my phone number when I move to new cities so telelmarketers won't have my number, but I guess random dialing won't prevent them from finding it eventually. Maybe it's time I permanently got rid of my land-line, which, like the radio, has become a tool for marketing rather than communication.
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.
Perhaps I just don't understand the way phone calls are routed, or I am oversimplifying the matter...but don't phone number prefixes belong to the phone companies that "originate" the numbers? Thats problably the wrong term..
That is to say that, isn't requiring these companies to make phone numbers portable comparable to asking ISP to make email address portable...technically speaking?
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.
"... (one number for life... the ultimate!)"
....
Not good enough. The true ultimate number would last into the afterlife. That way, we could call dead people, and not have to remember a special post-mortem phone number.
Much superior to the old postal method of contacting dead people, via the dead-letter office
-kgj
" (one number for life... the ultimate!)"
Err I'm not sure that's the 'ultimate'. The nice thing about having everybody rotate numbers is that telemarketer records have to be updated. Then, there's the whole problem of having to have much longer phone numbers. I don't mean to poo-poo it, just that I kind of like having to rotate once in a while.
One thing I would like, though, is the ability to alias my phone number. I had an idea a few years ago where your e-mail address (or domain name maybe? I dunno...) could be registerred with a central service. This service would store your phone # and mailing address. If somebody dialed your email address on the phone, it would lookt it up in this database and then route the call. As long as you kept your info up to date, then people would only have to remember your email address to talk to you or send you stuff.
Of course there are privacy concerns and other problems I haven't thought of. It's just that on the surface, it seems like a neat idea. Imagine being able to block individuals this way!
Hmm okay I'm rambling. I just think the digital world has the potential to really make things different for the better. I daydream about it sometimes.
"Derp de derp."
This'll be REALLY useful when we can finally halt the flood of telemarketers calling constantly.
...the European cell network is great because of this kind of crap?
I don't care how cool your GSM network tech is or how easy it is to roam from Spain to Syria, if you have to put up with this kind of BS billing game it's not worth it...
Why not just use your SSN/SIN number? It's not like we have any privacy anyway. This would just be facing the music.
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
Free cell phone tracking
Hate to tell you, but vonage only offers IP phones.
:)
You have their service yet dont know this?
By the way, welcome to the discussion on cell phone carriers
I have a relative who works at a large cell phone company. At this company, they not only have to install back-end programming at the switch and call routing level, but they also have to install software in customers' handsets.
Why is that a big deal?
Older phones that customers have come to rely on, and that they understand how to operate, must be replaced. While this only affects handsets that have to have their number changed (your old handset works great until you switch numbers), it's still a hassle for both the company and the customer:
While it's true that it will benefit the customer to have number portability in place, even without the lock of the number on the customer that's now gone over the number, there is no real benefit to the company. Everybody will be doing it so there's not even any competative advantage.
Cell phone companies are simply looking out for their revenue streams (as good public companies should) because number portability is nothing but a money loser for them. In a business that's still mostly in the red anyway, it's no wonder.
rw
Remove the caps and hold to a mirror.
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.
The answer to the question that Douglas Adam's fans know: "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE".
(True in base 13)
Open source development is my way of competing with the low-cost programmers in India...
Say you were using AT&T Wireless then you switch to Verizon and keep your number. You number is probably still going thru some piece of AT&T since, technically, they control the number range into which your number falls.
So you have a problem such as you can't receive calls. You call your current carrier, Verizon who says the problem is with AT&T since your number falls into their range. You call AT&T who says they are not your carrier so they can't help you. And back and forth you go...
I think I'd rather deal with a number change.
This is just a US problem, we've had cross operator number portability in the UK for years in the UK and I think most other European countries have it too.
Will this raise the cost of switching to a new number? When I start getting too many ex girlfriends, telemarketers, bosses, etc.. calling my cell, it's time for a new one.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You now have a fixed phone number, for life.
/. about telecomms is starting to have at least one "...vonage..." message. Is it astroturfing?
No, you have a number as long as Vonage is in business and supports your use of their service.
It seems that every story on
Sounds interesting. What do you get for referring customers, sorehands? Or should I call you "refer_id=5938p911"?
Am I the only person who doesn't use a Cell Phone these days? Would you hold the back of a TV set to the side of your head?
Not unless you are into radiation therapy.
Granted X-rays are higher energy waves than cell phones, but that stuff adds up.
What about moving? While keeping the same number while changing carriers is fine and dandy, the statement "one number for life... the ultimate!" is clearly ignorant to the fact that homo sapiens sometimes move. There's no good reason to not be able to, say, keep my NYC number when I move to Miami.
Must-not-watch TV!
A little poking around and it seems that for each referral the referrer gets $40 in credit.
Dont forget on top of the $40 refferal they get +4 karma!
If You Love Your Wireless Customers, Set Them Free
ByRoss Rubin
That reminds me of a great saying:
"If you truly love something, set it free. And if it doesn't come back: hunt it down and kill it."
The thing that SUCKS about places like vonage and every other neat internet/wireless thing, is they just ignore certain cities. For some reason, out of the hundreds of area codes, I can't get one in my city. The 45th largest in the US by city size, 61st by metro area size (As of 2000, still growing). None of these companies can explain to me why my city gets overlooked, just a "we're expanding", but they never do.
Every time I see something new that's restricted by geography on slashdot, I think. "Cool, I'll see that in about 15 years if I'm lucky."
I know. When living in Austin, it took a while to get cable modem. But not having cable modem sucked there because the phone lines sucked (I was lucky to get a 26.1k connection).
Fight Spammers!
The nice thing about having everybody rotate numbers is that telemarketer records have to be updated.
In the US it's illegal for a telemarker to call a cell phone, since it costs you money. (Boy, that sounds like spam...)
I ditched my land line years ago and haven't looked back. Some people say they don't like using a cell phone because they don't want to be reached. If you buy one with a 'power' button or a 'ringer volume' button, I don't see how it's a problem.
I'm just looking forward to being able to switch carriers and keep the same number I've had for almost 4 years now.
The slashdot crowd is always railing over privacy issues, how bad it would be if you had a single national ID card/number rather than the haphazard system of SSN#s, Licenses, work IDs, etc. And now they're buzzing over how great it would be to have one (phone) number for life!
If everyone really did have one phone number for life, it would quickly be come a de facto identifier. Why not go all the way? Have one unique lifetime number that works for your phone, email, instant messenging, snail mail (via a post office address database updated as you move), and as a general identifier replacing your SSN and Drivers License Number, etc.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
IPv6 is an addressing and routing scheme to extend the number of nodes on a network. I fail to see how this applies to cell phones, each of which already has a unique routable address. No, it's not the phone number.
DHCP is used to configure a node. Some new cell phones are already configured over the air today.
ZeroConf is used to discover services. I have no idea why you think this will apply to a cellular network.
When you turn on your phone you're on the network.
What do you think happens today? Do you have to log on? Provide a password? Talk to an operator?
Who else is on the network? Your phone tells you.
A million other people are on the network.
Want to call someone? Select their name from your buddy list.
I've been doing that for years. It's a bit tedious to enter the data in the first place, but with vCards over IR or Bluetooth, it'd be quite trivial.
All this archaic ten-digit dialing, ringing, answering, messaging is all going to seem very quaint in ten years.
I don't do ten-digit dialling today, so that's not worth discussing.
Ringing? How else does a phone tell you that somebody wants to talk to you? (I'm including "vibrate" in the same category.)
Answering? This is when you start the connection. In the future it might not involve pressing a button, but certainly you will have to answer your phone somehow.
So I'm afraid I don't really know what you're talking about.
Bah..I am a typical slashdot geek...Nobody ever calls me anyway.
When you turn on your phone you're on the network. Who else is on the network? Your phone tells you.
VIEWING RESULTS 1-10 OF 1,352,426 [MORE]
Want to call someone? Select their name from your buddy list.
Which would be different than me selecting their name from my phone's autodialer and pushing the Talk button how?
Verizon already started doing this couple of months ago. It's funny - even though Verizon was the one most opposed to this FCC regulation, they started implementing it first. Others, I am guessing will stretch out to November until the deadline.
of a /. article stating "a wireless phone number for life!", and in the next article: "throw away your ID cards!"
"I ditched my land line years ago and haven't looked back. Some people say they don't like using a cell phone because they don't want to be reached. If you buy one with a 'power' button or a 'ringer volume' button, I don't see how it's a problem."
Yep, I'm a cell-lubber too. That's all I've had for the last 6 years. It's on silent. It's been on slient for ages. If I'm near it, I can hear it whirrrrr. If I'm not near it, it doesn't disturb anybody.
I'm glad my pavlovian 'panic because the phone is ringing!' response has nearly disappeared. I'm sick of running to the phone. I just wish I didn't have a phone at work.
"Derp de derp."
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Interoperability with legacy systems is the problem here. I can still use a rotary phone made before I was born to call your modern cellphone. Good luck getting the PSTN to switch to your buddy list system.
Then again, instant messaging services already have voice chat. With the average amount of bandwidth going into the average person's home increasing, using IM with a high-quality voice stream would be preferable to a landline phone.
Also, I would definitely be interested in a buddy list kind of thing for my cell phone, especially if I had the option of blocking people like I can on IM.
Not having a cellphone (well, not using the one I have for over a year) but having multiple PDA's, I'd like to read pda-related discussions but not cellphone discussions. Can a new category be added? (Yeah, I know, there's a wireless topic as well, just to confuse the issue, perhaps it could be split into WiFi, BT, and ...?)
> (one number for life... the ultimate!)"
/. is about privacy - NOT having one number...
But the next story on
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
The Australian authorities ordered Australian mobile carriers to make phone numbers portable, and this came into effect about a year ago.
Many people switched providers, but some may have had to pay out the remainder of their contracts (all the fine print you sign when you get a phone). Most phone contracts run for 18-24 months... this could be quite costly.
I'm sick of all these front page news items about 'America' getting number portability. I'm sorry but it's just wasted space. Australia has had the same thing for at least 2 years now and ... well I don't think you guys really cared about that. OK, maybe one article but there's been front page stuff for ages now ....
That is because it is not ripped from a CD-ROM, but rather, people get to join at their own free will. It has yet to be promoted widely either. it is useful to those who join, and in the long term, to those who want to look up old friends either using their GoNumber or name, keywords etc.
O'WONDERWe're working on it.