Cell Phone Number Portability Ruling

Ken@WearableTech writes "Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off. Verizon's action on the FCC's number portability ruling was dismissed by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The court found that Verizon had waited far too long to bring the challenge and it also sided with the FCC's interpretation of the Law rather than Verizon. Barring any other action we may see number portability this year. Unfortunately, Verizon is already lobbying to have the law changed. But it was also nice to see Cingular was on the FCC's side of the case."

Comments

This is easy for Verizon

[mao che minh]

Verizon keeps complaining about the costs associated with this (getting themselves able to handle portable numbers with celluar phones). So, why don't they just do what every other corporation does to save money: hire half-assed tech support and software developers in foreign nations, and blame the poor state of the economy (which never hurts them, since their alarmingly high revenue stream comes from the unregulated Baby Bell status) to cut employee benefits here stateside? What's the big deal? It's a proven cost-saving method for corporations.

Excuse me, why are you telling me that Hell is hot? Why should I care?

PS: fist post fools

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that they haven't done that yet? Shit man, just think how crappy eighth-assed technical support and illiterate software shit-tossers in bog-swamps would be?

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, you ignorant fucking twit.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[bug506]

I don't understand why they are complaining about the costs of this--they are just passing it on to their customers anyway. And, perhaps most annoyingly, they don't pass it on to the consumers in the price of the calling plans, they tack it on as a "surcharge" (the government lets them do this). Imagine going to Wal-Mart, and when you pay for your purchase you are not only charged tax, but you are charged an explicit surcharge for the various fees arising from government mandates that they had to incur.

From the article:

"Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said he opposes another delay because wireless companies already collect customer surcharges for both the number portability and 911 efforts."

All of their arguments seem very disingenuous.

It seems to me that they are afraid that when a customer calls in with a problem, they might actually have to fix now that it will be less painful for the customer to switch.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Total_Wimp]

Why is it that they complain about the costs for things that actually help consumers but they have no problem implementing things that block us from saving money?

My new mLife plan and cell phone have the following âoefeaturesâ:

- Blocks my ability to make a standard RAS connection with my cell phone "modem" (built in feature of the phone) mandating that I use the outrageously priced mLife GPRS data carrier (about $40.00 for 20MB of transfers per month).

- Blocks my ability to restrict dialing of numbers (built into most SIMs at no extra charge but disabled on my AT&T phone)

- Blocks my ability to use the "call costs" feature of my Nokia cell phone so I know how much my calls are actually costing me

Now all of those features were built into the phone (and disabled by AT&T), but what about features that need to be provided on the carrier side?

- There's no carrier provided cost of call during the call (mandatory on German phones)

- Thereâ(TM)s no ability to meter usage (unless you buy the massively expensive "pay as you go" plans)

- Thereâ(TM)s no ability to restrict usage to only a few incoming/outgoing numbers for your kids' phones (the cell phone provided features don't work properly if caller ID is turned off) so itâ(TM)s painfully easy for your kids to go over their monthly minutes.

If these people wonâ(TM)t provide us service that serves us then they need laws to force it out of them. The number portability rule is not only a good one, but long overdue. The fact that theyâ(TM)re lobbying to screw us out of this feature for the sole purpose of lining their pockets at our inconvenience should be swatted down faster than fast.

TW

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Clay Mitchell]

It's because they aren't some benevolent charity, they are a corporation. I realize some of you slept through business class, but the point of a corporation is to make money, not to help the customer.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Darby]

but the point of a corporation is to make money, not to help the customer.

But you're forgetting that the only reason that We The People even allow them to exist is to provide a benefit to us. I think you might have drunk way too much of the kool-aid they're pumping out and forgotten that simple fact.
We rule them. They have no right to tell us what we can or cannot do. If there were less roll over and bare your belly people like you around this shit would not be happenning.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[garcia]

we used to have that right. We lost that in recent years.

They tell the government what to do w/what used to be our money and the government then tells us what to do.

We live in a world with fake freedom.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[jtshaw]

Just so you know, if you sign up for the AT&T on-line account stuff (free) you can view your usage in mostly real time. But I agree it is annoying they disabled those features on your phone. My phone, however, still has them all even though it is an AT&T network phone.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[BrokenHalo]

I don't understand why they are complaining about the costs of this

Just a big business' resistance to change. They do it because they can, pretty much like Microsoft's antics.

All it means is that the US is going to have to catch up with the rest of the world re number portability. Most civilised countries have had it for years.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Zeinfeld]

It's because they aren't some benevolent charity, they are a corporation. I realize some of you slept through business class, but the point of a corporation is to make money, not to help the customer.

It is because the government is corrupt. To take a look at how legislation is made read this story in the Washington Post.

Bascially DeLay and three cronies charged a company $56,000 to Republican campaign funds in return for exceptions from regulations. The company saw the payments as bribes - "we have a plan for participation to get a seat at the table". And so does every other company being shaken down buy GOP thugs.

Bush did not raise all that money in the last Presidential election from benificent philanthropists. He collected it form companies like Enron who wanted specific favors like being allowed to rig the California energy market.

To see if Verizon is going to get another delay (or maybe a De Lay) just take a look at how much money they give to Billy Tauzin, Tom Delay and co. The going tarif for that sort of favor would be about $500,000 or so.

The reason they do not want local number portability has nothing to do with capital cost. The systems are run by outsourcing companies and are simply a mondification of the existing SS7 system configuration. The reason they don't want to allow portability is that their customers are more likely to switch companies if there is a free market.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[TheCarp]

Simple, they don't want to lose customers

I am, for one, a Verizon customer right now and the only reasons I have to NOT shop arround is the cost of getting out of my contract and the hassle of changing phone numbers.

remove the latter and its just a ,atter of cost, a matter that dissapears now and again.

Frankly I am saying fuck the cost. Just because they fought number portability, the very day it goes into effect I am swithcing carriers. And to a carrier that offers GMS phones too.

Such a pain in the ass as I am in europe now (I hate french keyboards btw) and I wish I could have had a phone here: it would have simplified things alot.

-Steve

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[jxs2151]

Fake Freedom?

You've got so damn much freedom that you don't even recognize it anymore. Try whining to the Cubans or Chinese about your pathetic little problems with 'Freedom'.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Boogaroo]

If these people wonâ(TM)t provide us service that serves us then they need laws to force it out of them. The number portability rule is not only a good one, but long overdue. The fact that theyâ(TM)re lobbying to screw us out of this feature for the sole purpose of lining their pockets at our inconvenience should be swatted down faster than fast.

I do agree with what you're feeling there, but rather than making a law, vote with your money. We don't need more laws. If a company won't provide what you need, buy from company #2 and let company #1 know why. The posting did mention that Cingular was on the good side of this one right?

At the risk of getting too long-winded: Yes, it may be inconvenient to vote with your money. Yes, it may mean not having a cellphone at all. Yes, it may not be possible for you at all for certain things, but the method DOES work. Quick example; AOL reduced the number of pop-ups because people cut their service with them.

Tired of the RIAA? Don't buy music. Tired of the MPAA? Don't go to the movies. Tired of high gas prices? Drive less/smarter. Inconvenienced by all this? Perhaps, but you win when you save your money for what really matters.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[anthony_dipierro]

I don't understand why they are complaining about the costs of this--they are just passing it on to their customers anyway.

Because the more they charge, the fewer people buy cell phones, and the less money they make. It's not like cell phones are a necessity. If the price is raised too high, people won't buy them.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[bensagenius]

Make sure and take note of Zeinfeld's unwritten point that only Rebuplicans are corrupt. I'm sure that Gore raised all of his money from "benificent philanthropists".

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Total_Wimp]

For many things I actually agree with you on this one. People should be doing far more voting with their dollars (and feet).

There are, however, things such as number portability that must have interoperable technology and will only work if A)all carriers agree to it or B)all carriers are forced to implement it. I think the government is serving everyone's interest quite well, including the cell phone carriers in the long run, when they force this kind of interoperability.

TW

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[garcia]

they are different than we are. We lost our freedom under the same regime we had 227 years ago.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[jxs2151]

That was a really lame response. A assertion that you either cannot or care not to substantiate.

Just 'cause you and Chomsky keep repeating it doesn't make it true.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Zeinfeld]

Make sure and take note of Zeinfeld's unwritten point that only Rebuplicans are corrupt.

Only Republicans seem to be stupid enough to be caught so blatantly.

Of course with the media in their pocket they probably think they don't have to follow the rules. If anyone complains just accuse them of being yet another example of the biased liberal media, and start frothing at the mouth...

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[bensagenius]

Terry McAuliffe was stupid enough to be caught so blatantly, and yet none of the "biased liberal media" outlets have even mentioned his shenanigans with Global Crossings.

Re:This is easy for Verizon

[Anonymous Coward]

how was it lame? They were taken over by communist regimes in the past 50 years. We have been under the "same" government for 227.

They lost their freedoms due to them allowing a represive, communist regime to come to power. We lost our freedoms by thinking that we were still living in the freest nation in the world.

Before you go spouting off your personal opinions you should really think. You are just another one of those fucking dumbass /. trolls that thinks that they understand everything.

Go fuck yourself dickface.

Verizon

[Exiler]

Is it just me, or have they been pissing off far to many social groups recently?

Soon we're going to turn on the news and see "Verizon CEO viciously beaten in the street by working class, executives, geeks, and teenage girls"

Re:Verizon

[dspyder]

Those groups are the ones that have to get pissed off before action will ever get taken. Who is going to give much weight to the comparatively tiny geek population that is actually aware of the underlying morality, freedom, and competition issues? When the public at large gets interested in an issue (say the cancellation of Felicity for example, blech) they will make a stand and _then_ companies will listen!

--D

Whose quote was "Never underestimate the stupidity of the American Public"???

Re:Verizon

[gauche]

Howard Stern?

H.L. Mencken, though, has the better version: "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

Lets hope

[SuDZ]

I hope portability does become an option. It is such a pain to try to let friends and family know my new number after giving the old one out to so many people. Especially freinds who I dont talk to as much anymore, when they do call it would be nice to hear from them and not miss it due to changing companies.

SuDZ

Re:Lets hope

[gfody]

the worst is when you just got a new number and you get calls all the time from ppl trying to reach the old owner of that number. what is the down side to this issue, is this even the issue?

Re:Lets hope

[SuDZ]

Depends on who is calling. Cute girls calling all the time and starting conversations is not bad. Wrinkled up old guys however is horribly bad. :)

SuDZ

Re:Lets hope

[gfody]

yea sometimes a girl would call and I would just act like her friend.

somegirl> hey tish?
>> hey! how've you been??
somegirl> you sound different
>> oh, ya, I'm uh *cough* dying from sars

Re:Lets hope

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, your karma sucks ass

Re:Lets hope

[Wonderkid]

Sudz, if you get a lifetime personal GoNumber, you don't have to worry such matters. Get a free one on me at GoNumber.net/free.

Re:Lets hope

[hardeight]

In the meantime you can use forwardportal.com

It's fairly new, i think, but some of my friends listed when they changed their number.

m

It's about time

[double_plus_ungod]

It doesn't appear to be tecnically challenging to allow numbers to remain the same. Change an entry in a database and there you go. This will increase competition, not decrease it.

Re:It's about time

[SuDZ]

Exactly, I mean I might consider changing to Verizon some day if the reception is better for me than Cingular is etc. I mean why is Cingular for it and Verizon so against it? It would seem to me they would both have the same costs,responcibilities to take care of.

SuDZ

Re:It's about time

[gfody]

they probably did something really stupid - like using phonenumber as the primary key.

ever notice on your bill how your account number is your phone number?

Re:It's about time

[bmwm3nut]

i'm not going to argue with you on how stupid it is to use the phone number as the primary key (i know it is). but this wouldn't make the number portability harder would it? either you leave verison and go to a new service and keep your number, so all they need is a

delete * from all_the_tables where phone_number=123-456-7890

or you come to verizon with your own phone number and all they have to do is

insert new_user_info into customer_tables

so my guess is that they'd rather not have the added competition.

Re:It's about time

[gfody]

but this wouldn't make the number portability harder would it?

they probably have lots of different systems with all sorts of redundancy and no real db-level ri. I could imagine a company like verizon with all the merging and legacy systems from more than 3 different companies being a total mess.

however, I think your right about the problem being pollitical rather than technical.

Re:It's about time

[mugnyte]

getting a new phone number is already easy. this isn't what they are complaining about. the block system is what providers use. they acquire a block of numbers and put them in their pool. when in a provider, you choose from their pool.

within a provider, they have legacy systems that restricts phone number by "exchange" or the 3 digits past "area code". they used to signify geographic domains about 30 years ago. cellulars are out of this realm, but the same code applies at some point - with a nice hack i'd like to see.

blocks are constantly bought and sold. their systems now, i'm guessing, rarely sell blocks back. but now they'll have to build a list of "numbers for transfer" and the destination provider when a number has to leave the pool for delivery not the government authority, but another provider.

addionally, these transfers are probably batch legacy jobs, and the schedules of those jobs has to be examined to help a customer's switch with a day or so.

overall, they'll probably get out of most of these backflips by explaining there's some outrageous surcharge and a messy wait (like "5-10 business days"). customers would rather just call mom and say "ma, i have a new phone number"

mug

Re:It's about time

[usmcpanzer]

It doesn't appear to be tecnically challenging to allow numbers to remain the same. Change an entry in a database and there you go. This will increase competition, not decrease it.

1. Wrong, the way AT&T sees it, it will be a huge mess. First off, each comapany ownes their exchange of numbers (ie: xxx-287-xxxx). The solution so far provided esentially is forwarding calls from that number to whatever your new company gives you. Huge headaches if you think about what happens if you switch 2 or more times. Second, its an excuse for another fee. I've heard anywhere from $35(defenitely) to $300(probably to discourage you from it). What needs to be done is an industry coalition numbering authority that owns and issues
2. single numbers, not ranges. But that would put off number portatbility for a few more years. Unless they do that, expect to see an exponential rise in the need for new numbers, area codes, and eventully new digits if your having your original number forward +4 times, each number owned by you!

Re:It's about time

[Skater]

Mine (Verizon) isn't.

--RJ

Re:It's about time

[mlong]

they probably did something really stupid - like using phonenumber as the primary key.

ever notice on your bill how your account number is your phone number?

I'm with Verizon and my account number is not my phone number...in fact it is not any number I recognize. It's 9 digits plus a dash plus another 5 digits (which are 00001 so I suspect that part is for multiple phones in the same family or something)

Re:It's about time

[BMIComp]

Are you saying that there is a centralized cellular database though? I'm no expert on these issues, but it would seem like each cellular company (Cingular, Verizon, etc) has there own database of numbers. If I moved from Cingular to Verizon, Cingular would have to remove my entry from their database and add mine to Verizon's. The cell phone companies would have to create a central database or a procedure for transferring. I don't think it's as simple as you think.

Re:It's about time

[anthony_dipierro]

they probably did something really stupid - like using phonenumber as the primary key.

Which wouldn't have been a problem, except they're using mysql.

Re:It's about time

[anthony_dipierro]

It doesn't appear to be tecnically challenging to allow numbers to remain the same. Change an entry in a database and there you go.

Yeah, and we should require that ISPs allow you to keep the same email address when you switch providers. 'Cause that would just be a changed entry in a database, right?

Re:It's about time

[smartalix]

What makes you think that corporations want competition? The threat of increased competition is exactly what scares the hell out of the phone companies (and every other business entity on the planet.)

If a corporation could, they'd implant a chip in your brain that would give you an electric shock every time you considered buying something from their competition.

Locking in your number makes you dependent upon them, however shitty their service. Number portability would be a major empowerment for the consumer.

Re:It's about time

[HTH NE1]

ever notice on your bill how your account number is your phone number?

Well, they need all 10 of those digits. What do you expect them to do: bill everyone according to only the 9 digits of their social security number?

Yeah, huh.

[jspoon]

"Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off."

Thank god you checked it every day, otherwise this would never have happened.

Re:Yeah, huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

But where the fuck are the weapons of mass destruction?

Q) Where is Saddam's biological weapon?
A) In GB's ass

Re:Yeah, huh.

[Imperator]

Just think how much more democracy we'd have if he had used a Perl script to check lots of sites and see whether they'd changed.

Re:Yeah, huh.

[Ken@WearableTech]

Jason,

If you can't take a joke. F*ck off.

Warm Regards,

Ken

Re:Yeah, huh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ken, Hehehehe... I'm not sure Jason's the one that can't take a joke. Actually, his joke was a hell of a lot funnier than yours! Forever Yours, AC

Re:Yeah, huh.

[Jester99]

Indeed, how much more democracy would such a hypothetical page bring about? :)

Mandatory Statement

[Hrshgn]

Ha! Number Portability. That's sooo 1999. And some Americans think the world envies them.

Hrshgn

Re:Mandatory Statement

[PhoenixFlare]

And some Europeans believe they're superior to everyone else...So we're even :):P

Re:Mandatory Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference being that we actually are superior, and you are a bunch of ego-inflated morons :)

Re:Mandatory Statement

[PhoenixFlare]

I think you just made my original point nicely...I rest my case :):P

Re:Mandatory Statement

[ufpdom]

The only thing that the world envies is the good old fashion US $DOLLAR$. And how much gold we have too :D

Re:Mandatory Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you assume he's European?...

Everywhere that's not the USA isn't automatically Europe.

Re:Mandatory Statement

[Hrshgn]

MAYBE he checked my email and
MAYBE he realised that CH is the swiss TLD
and Switzerland is more or less part of europe.

Re:Mandatory Statement

[danro]

And some Europeans believe they're superior to everyone else...So we're even :):P

What can I say: Touche!
I think you just won this thread.

Re:Mandatory Statement

[PhoenixFlare]

Well, gee, as he says below, the .ch TLD is assigned to Switzerland, and:

A) The gmx.ch domain is registered to a company in Germany.

B) The last hop I can resolve on a traceroute is yet another German-owned domain.

C) Hmm...Maybe this might be a clue?

Combine all this with the fact that Switzerland and Germany are smack-dab in Central-Western Europe, and why, exactly, would I not assume he is European?

Don't insult my intelligence, Mr. AC...Not everyone in the US thinks nothing exists outside our borders, despite what those with anti-American prejudices may like to think :):P

Re:Mandatory Statement

[Anonymous Coward]

We have good reason to think that.

SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, now I can keep getting the same spam calls forever, even when I change companies.

Re:SPAM

[sunilonline]

Who said you had to keep the same number.. It's not like the law says you can only have one cell phone - if all else fails, start a new number before you cancel the old one!

I'm confused...

[Bull999999]

At first, Verizon was protecting the rights of the consumers by fighting RIAA but now they are going against the consumers by fighting a law backed my congress that was against the consumers by helping RIAA expect recently introduced a bill by a senator to help the consumers...

Re:I'm confused...

[XorNand]

Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.
If you think they have any interest in "protecting the rights of consumers", boy do I have deal for you on some Packard-Bell desktops.

Re:I'm confused...

[zerocool^]

It's friday. On friday, verizon=bad. However, alternating days starting sunday with "good" lead to friday being "bad", followed by saturday, which is also "good" verizon day.

So, we hate verizon 3 out of 5 week days.

Sheesh, you must be new here.

~wx

Re:I'm confused...

[Bull999999]

Last time I checked, shareholders are consumers, too. And I'm pretty sure that many of them own cell phones as well.

Re:I'm confused...

[nolife]

They were not directly fighting for consumers with the RIAA. Some consumers would benefit but Verizon would benefit more. They did not want a precedent set where they would be responsible for the proper disclosure and required by law to respond to every Tom, Dick and Hillary that claimed a copyright violation by one of there users. They want a court to be involved to limit their liability from the customer and the requesting party.

Re:I'm confused...

[prisoner]

Profits don't seem to have much to do with this. There'a charge on every cell phone bill but the "feature" is unavailable....we're already paying for it. Why can't we have it?

Re:I'm confused...

[qasama]

> Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to > its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.

uh huh. Would you like a Black Rocket with that,
too? VZ is big enough that at times different parts are doing different things, some of them
things that clearly don't benefit the shareholders and may disagree with things that other parts of the company are doing. It's what happens when you have a 200,000+ person company.

U.S. Patent office solves the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I suggest people patent their phone number.

I've seen people patent their Social Security Number, revoke their SSN, and anyone caught using their Intelectual Property pay a handsome royalty.

Do it! Do it now! Because god-damnit jim, I am a doctor and I should be the one holding the username doctorjim@yahoo.com as well as doctorjim@hotmail.com!

But then again, that is a Publican's mentality. In the Christian world, you are known by your Persona and not the body your spirit lives within. Secretly, that is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he presented his "State Of The Union Speach." That combined the corpus with the persona; your persona is in the United States corporation, whilst the bodies are the States of America, but lest we not confuse the States of America with the securities (assets) secured by the United States corporation (citizens of the United States) that have a 1040 war bond with their name on it beheld by the Internation Banks in Switzerland.

PS: Do not confuse the Common Law venue with the Federal Venue

PS: Do not confuse the fifty united States of America with the United States (corporation). And for goodness sakes, read the senate reports on the 14th ammendment; they are racists emancipating the slaves into the United States corporation, instead of the slaves being manumitted.

Are lobbyists cheap?

[dspyder]

For the amount of money the cellphone companies have collectively spent on lobbying and fighting court battles, they could have hired a bunch of the out-of-work slashdotters and solved teh problem once and for all.

Oh, it's not _truly_ a technology problem? :)

--D

Odd.

[Elwood P Dowd]

I want phone number portability so that I can switch from Cingular's towers to Verizon's. Verizon has much, much better customer support and reception where I live. Don't they think they're going to win here?

Of course, they're also much more expensive, but...

Re:Odd.

[mcrbids]

Not really.

If two companies are competing with each other, anything that creates a percentage of people to switch favors the smaller company.

For example, if Cingular loses 5% of their audience to Verizon, and Verizon loses 5% of their audience to Cingular, who comes out ahead?

Re:Odd.

[afidel]

Actually in cellular anything that favors customer mobility is a bad thing with the current model. Notice how you normally have to sign a one or two year contract when signing up for those good deals? That's because a lot of the costs are frontloaded for the vendor, from processing to advertising to phone subsidizing, etc. My dad had received some horrible service from frontline people and had tons of billing mistakes over the almost two decades he has had cellphones, but once he reaches a certain level he always gets his way and usually more because he is a high volume user (two cellphones with large plans right now) and getting new customers like him is an expensive operation for the vendor so fixing his problem and giving him a small bone is a cheap way to "win" a customer. That and like many around here with computers he has always been a kind of driver of cellular use, from his first car install to the early bagphones all the way to current gwiz bluetooth-picturephone-3G models he has been an early adopter and a tech evangelist. Companies that piss him off get noted as such to many aquantices and those that have done well by him get promoted.

Re:Odd.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well woohoo good for your daddy. Now why doesn't he teach you to use

or change your formatting options?

Re:Odd.

[nolife]

Almost anyone that paid thier bill on time when under contract will be offered some type of deal if you call and get transferred to the retention department. Each carrier has thier common perks but updated phones and more minutes are very popular.
Google groups can give you an overview but if you have some time to kill, it does not hurt to frequent alt.cellular.verizon and alt.cellular.sprintpcs on a regular basis.

Re:Odd.

[anthony_dipierro]

Verizon has much, much better customer support and reception where I live. Don't they think they're going to win here?

Maybe they're just being honest when they say that it's going to cost them a lot of money to implement it.

other and better sources

[Anonymous Coward]

Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off.

how about this? I saw this in the early afternoon. And slashdot is more than a few hours late.

What the hell happened to timely news here?

*registering* to get an Ef Pee? lol; MORON.

[Anonymous Coward]

asdf

charge for it

[dirvish]

Why doesn't Verizon just charge a number portability fee like the land-line phone companies do? Is the FCC or the courts stopping them? If there only argument against portability is cost why don't they pass the cost off to the customers? Then Cingular can capatalize on it w/ a No Portability Charge ad campaign since they seem to be in favor of protability. Works for everyone...except maybe customers.

Re:charge for it

[realdpk]

The last 5 phone companies I've dealt with (one cellular) have included a number portability fee. AFAICR, I've been paying for this service for YEARS. I didn't know it wasn't working.

That makes me pretty unhappy.

Re:charge for it

[fragged one]

sprint, cingular, verizon, and t-mobile/voicestream have been charging the fee for a while now, with some of the companies, they've been charging it for years in anticipation of number portability. at&t wireless seems to be the only standout, as they've just now started charging this fee.

i can also say, that this government enforcement is not cheap at all. the cellular company i work for has already spent close to 100 million dollars trying to implement the process of transferring numbers. get ready for higher bills, as we expect to RAISE rates for the first time in 10 years. as i understand, other companies may follow suit.

Re:charge for it

[BrynM]

So what happened to the money collected so far? I would think that the payments collected for a service that hasn't been activated for years might help defer the cost of finally activating that service. This says that "Southwestern Bell charges 33 cents to each customer" and has been for since 1999. So let's see, this says that SBC has "6.9 million wireless customers across the United States" as of 1999. It's been 54 months since January 1, 1999 including this month. 54 * 6,900,000 = 372,600,000 months of total charges. 372,600,000 * $0.33 = $122,958,000.00 which makes a $22,958,000.00 profit(!!!!) on the $100,000,000.00 re-tooling you mention if it were SBC. That's not even counting the growth of the customer base since 1999!

Are the Feds keeping track of how much is collected? Probably not. I suspect nobody is but some wily executives and accountants.

Re:charge for it

[andy1307]

They are going to charge for it. EVERYONE will pay an additional WNP charge on their bill. Verizon doesn't oppose WNP per se. They oppose the rule requiring land lines to be transferred to wireless carriers. Verizon stands to loose the most because they are the LECs. Cingular, Nextel and T-mobile would gain for people substituting their land lines for cell phones and retaining their numbers. Many small businesses now have the option of retaining their phone numbers and going wireless.

Re:charge for it

[anthony_dipierro]

Why doesn't Verizon just charge a number portability fee like the land-line phone companies do?

Are they allowed to raise their fees without excusing people from their contracts? I'd assume not.

Re:charge for it

[fragged one]

that sounds about right. keep in mind, though, that the companies make a general fee (usually called 'regulatory fee') to pay for all federal regulations, not just this one. the cost of regulating a company has always been more than the cost of lowered competition.

You wanna know what really happened?

[bigmase521]

I put in a call to James Earl Jones. His personal assistant forwarded the message and he took time out of his busy break-dancing schedule to call me back.

James (in signature voice): What's up bud?

Me: Big Jimbo, you know this mess w/ Verizon trying to stop Cell Number portability? Is there anything ya can do about that?

James: oh ho ho ho, Let me see what I can do my friend.

Me: Well since we're on the subject, see what you can do about that "can you hear me now?" dude will ya?

James: I'm only one man guy. One very famous, very well-respected, Toni Award-winning man *pauses* On second thought, let me see what I can do about that guy too, I just saw him on a commercial for the 132nd time today. I'll get back to ya.

One down, one to go! Jimbo's clutch :)

Number Hogging

[sunilonline]

Why did the US decide to keep it so that cell phones shared numbers with landline area codes, unlike other countries, such as India, who have dedicated cell area codes? It is so impractical because cell phone numbers are constantly changing, whereas landline numbers are not. Even with this new law, people still move around, and wouldn't mind keeping the same cell number, esp. when they have a billion minutes...

Re:Number Hogging

[Anonymous Coward]

They tried to. The cell phone companies sued.

Re:Number Hogging

[Anonymous Coward]

because average american male could not remember more that 10 digits.

Re:Number Hogging

[Detritus]

Cell phones (AMPS) were introduced before the explosion in area codes. Local calls were dialed with 7 digits in most places. You only needed to dial an area code if it was a toll (long distance) call. The existing mobile telephone service (non-cellular) used regular 7 digit phone numbers. It was much simpler to just allocate some new exchanges in the existing area codes for the new cellular services. Airtime charges for mobile phone service (pre-cellular, AMPS, TDMA/GSM/CDMA) have always been charged to the mobile subscriber, no matter who originated the call. This means that the wireline telephone companies do not have to modify their billing systems to handle calls to/from mobile telephone subscribers.

Re:Number Hogging

[LostCluster]

Because we already had to break a previous rule that said that the middle digit of an area code has to be a 0 or 1, and we're already well along the way to maxing out all of the possible 3 digit area codes available.

In addition, cell phone numbers do have a "handoff" location associated with the first 6 digits of their number (area code + exchange code) and landline carriers bill callers a toll charge to reach a distant handoff point even if the cell phone itself is next to the caller. What this means is that if you have a Worcester, MA-based cell phone and your friends are all closer to Boston, MA, your friends are going to have to make a toll call to reach you... so as you move you'd certainly want to have your cell phone number be locally-based.

Re:Number Hogging

[steve_l]

This may have been the original plan, but look at it now: the cellphone vendors get to charge extra roaming/long distance fees when you use your phone outside the 'home area', and double charge on intra-network calls. That and the round up to the next minute plan all brings in bonus $.

I am so looking forward to getting a decent phone and decent service when I return to europe.
-steve

Re:Number Hogging

[grahammm]

Yet, if you had followed the European mechanism of providing dedicated 'area codes' to cell phones, a landline caller would be charged the same for a call to a cell anywhere in the country irrespective of where the owner actually lives. This would then remove the problem of location based cell numbers when you move. You could then move from Dallas to Seatle and keep the same cell number.

some problems

[afidel]

Although this problem is somewhat mitigated by the national do not call register.... cellular numbers are given from blocks owned by the cellphone providers and because numbers are not portable between landlines and portables it is easy for telemarketers to filter out the cellular banks from their call lists due to laws forbiding calls to cellular phones due to the reveiver pays nature of US cellular. This FCC ruling makes it so that this will no longer be possible and so telemarketers will be able to call cellphones and claim that they were not aware that it was a cellular number. But I do like the idea of moving my home number to an unlimited use local cellphone, north coast PCS has a 39.99 all you can eat local plan that will fit me nicely, 99.9% of my calls from my home number are local anyways. The amazing thing is the plan will be about as cheap as my local+long distance package cost on my landline.

Re:some problems

[Anonymous Coward]

How the fuck is this redundant??? Crackhead moderators.

Re:some problems

[Anonymous Coward]

because numbers are not portable between landlines and portables

yet.

Eventually, with service portability, you will be able to change the type of service (wireline, wireless, pager, etc.) while retaining the number. Local number portability is only the first stage in portability. The next is location portability: you keep your number when moving from Seattle to Miami. And finally with service portability, you will be able to do all three.

Wireline carriers (for the most part, there are some minor exceptions) have already implemented local number portability. Wireless carriers are dragging their feet because the pain of changing numbers is the only thing that keeps their already high churn rates from going through the roof.

Re:some problems

[anthony_dipierro]

This FCC ruling makes it so that this will no longer be possible and so telemarketers will be able to call cellphones and claim that they were not aware that it was a cellular number.

It doesn't matter. The law is one of strict liability. Ignorance is no excuse.

People worry too much.

[Zaphod B]

I don't get why everyone thinks this is going to be such an issue - on either side. Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.

Two things to note, which I have said before:

Local Number Portability (LNP - the wireline equivalent to WNP) has about a 30% failure rate according to agencies such as PUCO (Ohio's regulatory body) and the CPUC (California's regulatory body). Essentially, what happens is that the port does not work, and in most cases, rather than wait for the local telcos to get their ducksinaro, people just accept a new telephone number, one from the pool of numbers assigned to their new telco. I don't foresee this ratio being any better with WNP.

Local Exchanges - Surely you have noticed by now that a carrier normally does not have numbers in each rate centre in an area code. T-Mobile, for example, have numbers in the 310 area code only in Gardena and Santa Monica. If WNP follows the lead of LNP, the only requirement is that they port your existing number IF YOU ARE IN THE SAME RATE CENTRE. If you have a Cingular telephone in the Mar Vista rate centre, or an AT&T phone in the Beverly Hills rate centre, and you skip to T-Mobile, I assume your old provider would not be required to port your old number.

Finally, nowhere does it say that WNP is required to be a FREE service. I could see them charging your new company a fee for the service, and there is no doubt in my mind that the cost will be passed directly to the consumer.

Re:People worry too much.

[gfody]

isn't the issue the ability to change service providers and keep your phone number? that way your not stuck with a certain provider if its too much of a hassle to change your number.

if your moving to a new area code then your gunna have a new number regardless so whats it matter

Re:People worry too much.

[Zaphod B]

Rate centres != area codes.

Within the 310 area code there are (I believe) twelve rate centres, e.g., Malibu, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Compton, Gardena, West Los Angeles.

Let's say I live in Marina del Rey. Marina del Rey is not a rate centre - people who live in Marina del Rey normally have Culver City telephone numbers. If I live in MdR and I get a T-Mobile telephone, my choices are Santa Monica or Gardena (either of which is a local call), and I pick Santa Monica. Now let's say I get sick of T-Mobile and want an Cingular telephone.

I go and find out that Cingular do not have any numbers in the Santa Monica rate centre, only the Mar Vista centre. They are BOTH in the 310 area code, but I can't port my number from T-Mobile to Cingular, because they are only required to port within a rate centre.

Obviously, if you are changing area codes (i.e., moving), you are changing rate centres and WNP would not work.

The preceding assumes, of course, that WNP works along the same lines as LNP.

Re:People worry too much.

[weston]

Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.

That's the rational thing to believe -- unless of course you believe you are the worst of all the wireless carriers.

Maybe even more than one of the wireless carriers believes this. But of course, only one of them is right. :)

Re:People worry too much.

[Have Blue]

I can't believe there are any physical components involved in a modern wireless phone network. Ports that consist of entries in a database/routing table don't fail.

Such persistence in getting a story accepted...

[psoriac]

Argued April 15, 2003 Decided June 6, 2003

I'd like for my story submissions to be accepted as much as the next guy, but checking every day for almost two months seems a little excessive...

Re:Such persistence in getting a story accepted...

[Ken@WearableTech]

I checked because I care about the issue. I also found myself reading a lot of the other cases, it was very interesting. I learned alot about the court system in those two months.

A little excessive, well I'm sure you don't ever visit the same website once a day.

Verizon is always complaining.

[bleh-of-the-huns]

What is up with verizon, they complain about everything, they lobby'd to get deregulated, promising that if that happened they would provide data services to homes, that happened, and Verizon backed out of that and refuse to push out data services. Now they are bitching about number portability... Odds are this has nothing to do with cost, the only reason is because if they did enable it, most of their customers would jump ship, because their pricing, and customer service is the worst, of anything, cell provider, phone provider, data services, they are always rated the worst.

Its time someone bitch slapped Verizon. They are only fighting for their own survival, and still raking in the money for poor services.

Re:Verizon is always complaining.

[megsaint]

I would just like to point out that Verizon is the former Baby Bell. Verizon Wireless is a subsidiary partly owned by Verizon and partly owned by British telecom company Vodafone. Although there is a very strong relationship between Verizion and Verizon Wirless, *they are not the same company*.

Re:Verizon is always complaining.

[Anonymous Coward]

not so quick.... it is insulting to say they have the worst customer service, have you never had to call sprint pcs before? they clearly own that title.

information about the law

[ih8apple]

The law has been on the books since 1996 and was supposed to take effect no later than 1999, but the FCC has deferred implementation repeatedly for years. However, the FCC has said repeatededly that they will not defer implementation again and I'm becoming more optimistic that number portability will actually become real in Nov. (Rather than renewing my contract with AT&T (for another free new phone) as I've done for 4 years just to keep the same number, I'm holding off till Nov or till I hear that the law is deferred again. If the FCC doesn't defer again, GOODBYE AT&T!!!!!)

Another important point is that the cell phone companies have been adding fees for a couple of years now with the excuse to the FCC being "upgrading their systems" to support portability. They can't have it both ways, asking us to pay fees to support portability and then not give us portability.

Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[possible]

While I agree with the ruling, it would be nice to have a DNS-like system for telephone numbers. Map names to numbers, allow the numbers to change while the name stays the same.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[ewhenn]

Yes, operator, I would like to speak to William Smith in NY, NY.

Sorry, I dont think that idea would work. Too many mixups possible. Besides, have you ever had to change your number to prevent people from calling you? Admit it, its nice when you change your number and the "undesirables" somehow don't end up with your new number. This would seem to be a circumvention for that. (remember accordign to the above idea, the number can change, just not the name)

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[gfody]

like a phone book

problem is if your name is John Chin whats your dns entry going to be?

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[realdpk]

Names aren't unique though.

How about a system where the phone number is "technically" a lot longer. Like, 100 digits. The first 90 digits define the company code, the last 10 are your phone number. You don't ever actually have to dial 10 numbers, but the phone switches pre-pend your 90 digit company code to every call you make. Incoming calls would ask a switch for "*2065551212" and route the call to the result.

(Doesn't have to be 100 digits, just threw that number out there..)

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[possible]

In my post I specifically said "a DNS-like system". In your response you described a system that works nothing like DNS, so let me clue you in.

DNS works by using hierarchical mnemonic names with uniqueness enforced by a registry. It allows you to map these UNIQUE names to IP addresses. I don't know about you, but when I try to visit a website, I don't type into my browser "I'd like to visit the website of Bill's Soda Company in Wilmington", I type www.billsodaco.com. It works pretty well.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[lhand]

Actually this could work. Instead of mapping a name to a number, map the person's personal number to a actual service number. The service number would, of course, not be confused with the personal number. It would have a different format, be out-of-band, or whatever.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Realistic_Dragon]

This is likley to happen with IP6/packet based phones - but rather than a name it'll be your now virtualised phone number mapping to an IP6 address.

At least that was how I set it up when working on htis kind of thing at my old dot bomb :o)

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Telastyn]

As others have mentioned, names are not unique. Why not make domains then?

Foo-Bar@NY.NY#verizon.phone

Personally, I think the idea has the same problems that cause most people to not list their phone #. AND the problems that DNS has [collisions]. AND it would require the phone companies to admin a DNS-esque server; Verizon can't even keep a T1 working for more than a month.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[gss]

last time I checked my phone didn't have 26 buttons to handle the alphabet.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Chazmati]

I must be missing something. What happens when *2065551212 matches 10 different numbers, provided by 10 different wireless companies?

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Anonymous Coward]

last time i checked, the buttons 2 through 9 have 26 letters: 3 letters on each except for 7 and 9 which have 4.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[brianjcain]

Would you believe that they're trying to go at it the other way around? Mapping "names" (consisting only of numbers) to phone numbers. The benefit is that the phone numbers are already a globally unique addressing system.

Or at least, that's my trivial understanding of enum.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[TheRaven64]

How many people's email addresses do you actually remember? I remember most of my friends addresses, but then I also remember most of their phone numbers as well. The majority of people are not like that. They use a machine (or in more primitive areas a paper address book) to map people's names to numbers / email addresses. When they make a call on a mobile, they select the person's name from their address book. Ditto when they send an email. Whether the underlying address is alphabetical or numerical doesn't make much difference, since very few people actually use it.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[dukerobillard]

There's actually a RFC about this (2916; It's called "ENUM." The idea is to put telephone numbers (aka E.164 numbers in the ISO telephony standards world) into DNS. It's related to the VoIP/SIP work.

In a related issue, what's up with email address portability? Isn't it annoying that when your ISP goes out of business, you need to change email addresses? It's really the same problem.

My guess is that the typical Slashdotter can see what a pain it would be to have email address portability. Telephone number portability is just as bad. Not that you can't do it, but it's really hard and expensive. Every phone call becomes a database dip. Consider the size and speed of that distributed database.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[LostCluster]

Because the point of "number portablity" is to have a number that stays with you as you change providers. I think it would get confusing to have to remap Foo-Bar@NY.NY#verizon.phone to Cingular...

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[miu]

My guess is that the typical Slashdotter can see what a pain it would be to have email address portability. Telephone number portability is just as bad. Not that you can't do it, but it's really hard and expensive. Every phone call becomes a database dip. Consider the size and speed of that distributed database.

Because of the system in place right now switching equipment is supposed to consult a table (adminstered by our friends at Telecordia) to find out if a dialed number is in an NPA-NXX subject to LNP. Failure on the part of some smaller telcos (because of configuration or equipment) to do that is a large part of why number portability does not always work.

So half the db work is already done (query to find out whether to use LRN rather than LERG dest) and upgrading all numbers to use a routing number rather than the actual number is an obvious extension. Non-trivial, but certainly within Verizon's abilities with the number of extensions they have been given.

Lest you think me blindly anti-Verizon, I'm willing to bet that a majority of problems with ported numbers will be caused by smaller telcos, but Verizon will get all the blame. The big problems that Verizon will have will be the billing, monitoring/reporting, and number administration back end systems - but again I can't really cry for them too much wrt that issue as they have seen LNP requirements for wireless coming for years.

The real reason companies stall on this sort of stuff is because they know they can get away with it. Many times the unofficial tactic is to wait to implement things because you may be able to get the particular regulation changed, or a new political administration may cause a change in the overall regulatory environment.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[grahammm]

Telephone number portability is just as bad. Not that you can't do it, but it's really hard and expensive. Every phone call becomes a database dip. Consider the size and speed of that distributed database.

It does not have to work like that. We have had number portability, both landline and cell, in the UK for some time. I do not know the exact mechanism, but I know that when you port your number the call is initially offered to the network originally "owning" the number, this then recognises that the number had been ported and gives the correct destination network. So only those numbers which have been ported result in a database lookup.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Anonymous Coward]

have a government "database of non-colliding numbers". do some math, figure out how much it costs to store and retrieve a number over it's lifetime, and come up with a generation fee. pay $5 to the government to get a code that is cross-referencable with other information such as your name and address, previous employers, money you own, "phone numbers" (in reality the number itself could be used to contact you). Oh, but just don't get the number 666. I hear bad things about it.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[Zeinfeld]

Telephone number portability is just as bad. Not that you can't do it, but it's really hard and expensive. Every phone call becomes a database dip. Consider the size and speed of that distributed database.

The database required already exists, local number portability has been in effect for landlines for years.

The calls handled by the telephone system are a small fraction of the number of Internet accesses. The DNS chugs along without major problems even though it is continuously under attack from hackers.

There is simply no technical reason not to do local number portability, the switching system already exists. All the telcos have to do is pay for the database dips.

This has nothing to do with technical difficulty. The issue is purely making is a bit more inconvenient for customers to switch.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[dukerobillard]

The database required already exists, local number portability has been in effect for landlines for years....All the telcos have to do is pay for the database dips.

Indeed it does exist...I worked on Telcordia's SCP while that was being setup. LNP sold an awful lot of systems for Telcordia...and I'm sure that cost was passed on to consumers. :-) But it's not just a question of flicking a switch to make the dips. Something has to change in the MSCs to have them make the query.

And what about the whole HLR ("Home Location Register" migration thing? Mobile networks have this concept of the "Home" of a mobile number, to deal with roaming. The HLR is the network element that has the info on the number...it gets queried by the switch closest to the antenna your phone is using. If you want to move a mobile number, there has to be a way to transfer the HLR data between different vendors. Like, T-Mobile has to have a way to take over some of Verizon's HLR data. Whoa.

I've only thought about this for 10 minutes and my head hurts.

But, in any case, I didn't mean to say it was impossible, just that it's a lot of work, and a lot of money. Yes, there's a business reason, to hold on to customers, but that's not the only reason.

Re:Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system?

[dukerobillard]

Hmmm...seems to me that's only a win if most numbers aren't ported. For a ported number, that causes extra traffic before the db dip.

So that's a good runtime optimization for now, but it'll be bad in a couple of years, yeah?

In any case, it's more difficult to develop that than just doing a database dip everytime...as you'd expect with an optimization-type thing.

Don't count on your phone numbers.

[joeszilagyi]

There is no way Cingular, Verizon, Sprint, et al will let this fall by the wayside, period. The costs to them will be nothing less than astronomical.

Re:Don't count on your phone numbers.

[telstar]

"The costs to them will be nothing less than astronomical."

• The cost to them? Who pays your phone bills? Any cost to them will get immediately handed down to
• you. Companies don't want portability because they want to keep the customers they already have. Ironically, once they lose this battle in the courts, the people that will end up picking up the tab for this change will be the customers ... both those that take advantage of number portability and those that remain loyal to their current provider.

Re:Don't count on your phone numbers.

[toriver]

So what you're saying is that American phone companies are unable to do something their European equivalents have done for years now?

Making you change your phone number when you move from phone company to phone company is like making you change your name when you move from city to city.

Re:Don't count on your phone numbers.

[Zeinfeld]

The cost to them? Who pays your phone bills? Any cost to them will get immediately handed down to you.

No they do pay the costs. The whole point of local number portability is more competition which in turn means lower prices for consumers.

The cost of the necessary SS7 datadase dips is a cent or two per call. The cell companies are already billing you for it, even though they have done nothing to implement it and are probably going to outsource the business anyway. The additional competition between carriers is likely to reduce cellular rates by $10 a month or so.

Verizon know this will cost them. That is why they are going to go and buy the best politicians money can buy, starting with Billy Tauzin, Tom Delay and the others who were so helpful to Westar

bad ethics is bad business.

[twitter]

Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.

That's a poor excuse for unethical behavior and it does not lead to profits. When you see reasoning like that, sell out, quit and don't buy what they are selling. Someone else will do it better eventually.

A company has obligations to it's shareholders, it's customers and it's employees. Any company that decides to screw one of those three interests for the others will get around to screwing everyone. When you think it's OK to screw people, you screw everyone.

Anti competitive behavior screws all three interests at the same time. It screws the share holder by driving out other legitimate investments. It screws the customer by monopoly rents. It screws the employees by destroying competitive employers. Anti competitive behavior also leads to stagnation, which screws all three intersts again by blocking legitimate industry growth.

Re:bad ethics is bad business.

[XorNand]

I agree with you in princple. Public corporations are legally considered "persons" in many of the same ways as a flesh and blood human. I personally beleive that the invention of the public corporation to be one the most dangerous "advances" this society has ever produced.

Most public corps are owened by thousands upon thousands of different people. The only thing that these owners have in common is the desire to see their investment earn a profit. They are not part of the company culture and do not consider themselves responsible for its actions, yet they are in fact the owners! Mix in a few hundred million dollars and you have the capitalistic equivilent of a bumbling, multiheaded giant who roams the planet in search of things to consume.

As for your circular screwing point... yeah, eventually it'll catch up to some of the corps. But many of these companies have holdings that are equal to the GDP of a small country. That's a hell of a lot of interia to try and stop.

Re:bad ethics is bad business.

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe you're right. However, the obligations are not equal. I believe the order is usually: shareholders, customers, employees.

Re:bad ethics is bad business.

[sacrilicious]

I agree that bad ethics is morally bad business, but there appears to be no significant correlation between what is morally good and what turns a profit. Make no mistake: if opportunity and the legal climate allowed a public company to corner the market on oxygen and gouge you and everyone else on the planet for every penny you were worth until your last gasping breath, they would do it. The only role that morality would play would be if the appearance of immorality would somehow reduce the company's profit. "Morality" comes in a couple of subtley different flavors:

• Self-imposed morality: avoiding the harming of others because you empathize with others, or trust others when they say they can be harmed; in other words, harming others makes you feel bad despite their being no practical consequences to you.
• Feigned morality: avoiding the harming of others to whatever extent you believe that doing so will benefit you in a practical way.

As an example, consider two people who work at the same company. The company has a strict policy against sexual harrassment. Neither of these people makes sexual comments to coworkers. Person#1 refrains from doing so because of a belief that to do so would be wrong; the other refrains because of a fear of punishment. "Okay", one could say, "the system works: neither is violating the policy. What's the significance of the morality distinction?" The significance is this: if person#2 can think of a way to violate the policy without being caught, person#2 will violate the policy; person#1 would not.

The above example can be cast in a variety of situations, and the restriction in place can be less perjorative( e.g. speed limits: person#1 obeys because "laws should be obeyed", person#2 because they dislike traffic tickets). The point is the same: feigned morality evaporates with opportunity, and it is most certainly feigned morality that commercial entities engage in, if any.

Ten dollar cell phone bills

[WillASeattle]

That's what this means, allowing cell users to switch numbers easily. And once people get in the habit of buying the cell phone, the monthly fee will be around $10 a month, like it is in Europe, instead of the normal $100 a month here in the USA.

Real capitalists like real competition - I'm surprised the neo-cons let something like this slip through ...

Re:Ten dollar cell phone bills

[Anonymous Coward]

$100 per month?? What the hell kind of plan do you have? Even with the ridiculous taxes and fees, mine comes to $40 / month at the most.

I won't mntion what network I use, because I would probably get modded down by the fanboys here for not using GSM.

Re:Ten dollar cell phone bills

[megsaint]

I believe that the average cell phone bill is more like 45-50 dollars.

Re:Ten dollar cell phone bills

[telstar]

I pay $35/month, I use it as my only phone, I've got wireless web, and I've got more minutes than I could possibly use.
Don't get me wrong ... I'd jump at the chance to knock it down to $10.

No wonder Cingular is happy

[SuperBanana]

"But it was also nice to see Cingular was on the FCC's side of the case."

That's because they're the underdogs. No kidding they're thrilled- now all those Verizon, AT&T, etc customers have the capability to switch to them. It's already pretty easy to switch off Cingular- they don't lock you into a contract. I would imagine that Nextel stands to loose quite a bit here too, with a large # of business customers(my thought being that business people are less likely to switch #'s) and rather high pricing(though more reasonable recently.)

Frankly, I just wish Cingular would pick a name. They've switched names more than I've switched carriers- Omnipoint->Voicestream->Cingular...arrg.

Re:No wonder Cingular is happy

[Zaphod B]

You're joking, right?

1. Cingular have contracts, except on KiC (Keep in Contact) prepaid. Prepaid wireless NEVER has a contract.

2. Omnipoint -> Voicestream -> T-Mobile.

3. Nextel are immensely popular amoung businesses. They cater almost exclusively to businesses (their prepaid Boost Mobile division notwithstanding). Most people who have Nextels, though I hate to admit it because I loathe that "chirp" sound, are soundly in love with their push-to-talk Direct Connect figure.

Come to http://www.wirelessadvisor.com - we'll straighten you out. :-P

Re:No wonder Cingular is happy

[IO ERROR]

Omnipoint->Voicestream->Cingular...arrg.

Dunno where you live, but in this country, Voicestream became T-Mobile.

Re:No wonder Cingular is happy

[Litheroy]

I think a cursory glance at the title page has caused a misunderstanding here. Read through page two of the document, and you will see that Cingular was an intervenor "in support of petitioners." Verzion is the petitioner, ergo Cingular sided with Verizon, not the FCC.

Glad to see rationality won!

[jordandeamattson]

Glad to see that rationality won out here! All we are talking about is having the facility to deactivate a number on one network and forward it to another network. We are talking about being able to perform a database update, had a packet to another system, and perform another database update. This isn't rocket science. Yes, it is work and will be critical to get it right, but the overall investment should be relatively small. That plus that fact we have been paying for it (check your cell phone bill).

The judge was right, the carriers waited way too long to protest. Now they have to do it or face penalities. I am waiting for November and then it is goodbye Cingular and hello T-Mobile for my Treo (can you say GPRS, world-wide coverage that will let me easily and cheaply use my phone in India and Germany?)! I was waiting for this to happen, because I couldn't/wouldn't give up my number. But every month I cursed Cingular under my breath. I will be first in line to move!

Re:Glad to see rationality won!

[juuri]

Cingular provides GPRS most everywhere. If they don't provide it where you are, switch to the free roaming plan and then roam on t-mobile's GPRS network.

Re:US Europe

[thedbp]

An American response ... although I bear no real sentimental attatchment to my country of origin, I still feel the need to retort to your indignation:

1. We call them cell phones, yes. That is because our contracts put us into a state not unlike that of a turkish prison, with our phones being our "cell." Therefore, "Cell Phones".

2. We pay for incoming calls because it is worth it to make it appear as if people want to talk to us. Remember, this is America, where status is much easier to buy.

3. We don't use SMS because it costs a shitload more here than it does there. No joke here, just the fucked up truth.

Once again, as an American, I would be disgusted to look at your awful semi-continent on a map, that is, if I could find it.

What is it with the USA?

[Samir Gupta]

In India, Japan, and I'm sure much of the rest of the world, cell phone portability is the norm, and has been for several years.

Can someone please enlighten this genuinely-curious person as to why it's so much more difficult in the states to implement this? A matter of sheer scale? India and Japan have the same order of magnitude of cell phone users as the USA. And I'm sure it's not because of "multiple standards" -- we have multiple CDMA/GSM/PDC carriers in my countries as well.

Re:What is it with the USA?

[Anonymous Coward]

To put it simply, we have the oldest and largest nationwide phone network in the world. The amount of cruft grandfathered into it is unbelievable.

Re:What is it with the USA?

[mesocyclone]

The reason appears to be the business models followed by the carriers. They can do this because the FCC decided to use much less regulation in cellular phone service (starting with PCS) than it did in the past. [As a side note, if you are an Open Spectrum advocate, you should love our current cellular system!]

I used to be able to move a phone from one carrier to another as long as they were technically compatible. Now that isn't possible. Either the old carrier won't release the unlock codes to *my* phone or the new one won't accept it. They also don't wan't me to be able to move my phone number. This same sort of thinking will make it difficult to get universal instant messaging or many other advanced services.

The companies are trying to increase the friction in competition - making it more expensive or harder for customers to move from one company to another (churn). They imagine that this is in their benefit (and it is, in the short term, for the current winners). It is certainly in the interest of cell phone manufacturers (only one of whom is American, BTW), because when you switch carriers, you have to buy a new phone.

From the point of view of a cell phone service provider, they are selling you a vertically integrated package: a wireless telephone, the service to use it on, and a telephone number, and whatever proprietary incompatible service they can dream up (photography, instant messaging, etc). This was the same vision that computer companies had prior to the internet... you not only bought your computer from them... you also bought your remote computers and the data communications protocol between them.

The mess in the US has actually benefited the rest of the world, because different companies have tried a number of different technologies (7 different standards by my last count). This was probably responsible for CDMA becoming the preferred standard for next generation almost worldwide.

If the FCC has forced a single standard (like was done in most countries), TDMA would have been the result, for various reasons not worth getting into here.

As technical people, we recognize that interoperability and portability are optimal. But the average consumer does not. However, this one issue (portable phone numbers) is directly visible to them, so it is not surprising that it is the first to be regulated.

Once the cell phone providers get serious about advanced services (text and picture messaging, etc), they will encounter consumer resistance to their current plans. Who is going to want to buy an expensive, fancy phone if they can only communicate voice with anyone not on their carrier, and if they need to buy a different one to move to another carrier? Why buy text messaging unless it is universal (that one, via internet portals, is much closer to reality, but not by the intent of the carriers)?

As a side note... I have a Kyocera 6035 which I paid a bundle for. I really want a cell-phone/organizer combo, and I'd like a new, smaller one. Unfortunately, different phone vendors accept different ones, and only a few provide true roaming (BEWARE... if you buy some of these slick Palm OS or Windows-something phones, you won't be able to talk to ANYONE when you are out in the boondocks - they don't do analog AMPS phone). Kyocera has a new, better version, the 7135 (or something like that). It is compatible with my current carrier (Qwest), but THEY WON'T LET ME USE ONE! They don't sell them, don't want to sell them, and won't let me use one if I buy it elsewhere.

Sigh. Europe wins when it comes to mobile phone service!

Reason Why

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem has nothing to do with the techinical aspect of it.
But the fact that most people hate changing numbers; and Verizon has 1/3 of all the cell phone customers out there. Basicly they have a huge customer base that would like to try out one of the other carriers, but It is too much hassle.
Plus most of the remaining 2/3's don't have good enough credit for verizon.

For all the other carriers it would be great if they could try and take business away from verizon.

Who Cares... Just Cut The Tax

[abombss]

I could care less about number porting, what I do care is AT&T Wireless charges me $1.25 a month so my number can be ported. What crap, I already have to pay enough in taxes.

Re:Who Cares... Just Cut The Tax

[bmetzler]

What crap, I already have to pay enough in taxes.

It's not a tax, it is a *fee.* You do know what the difference is, right?

-Brent

Re:Who Cares... Just Cut The Tax

[gekman]

I'm going to guess that a "tax" goes to the guvmint and a "fee" is kept by Verizon.

Am I right?

Do I win anything?

Can I keep my cell number?

Easy to solve

[gazuga]

A land line costs (for me at least) ~$20 a month. Any company that requires my phone number gets the land line. Anyone else that I really want to be able to find me gets the cell phone number. Small price to pay for no telemarketers bothering me.

And with the new no call list being put into place, the solution will soon be free.

--gaz

Re:Easy to solve

[BlueTooth]

I always give out my cell phone number as my contact number. I have gotten one telemarketer in 4 years on the cell phone, compared to daily calls on the landline (which number I never gave out, I have Verizon to thank for that).

The thing is, it is illegal to make telemarketing calls to cell phones (since it costs the recipient money). My theory is that the telemarketers have a "block list" of area code/exchanges that are used by the cell companies.

Re:Easy to solve

[Phroggy]

The thing is, it is illegal to make telemarketing calls to cell phones (since it costs the recipient money). My theory is that the telemarketers have a "block list" of area code/exchanges that are used by the cell companies.

I believe this is correct; that one call you did get was probably from a small company that wasn't big enough to have a list like that (they probably have one by now).

Re:US Europe

[mjmalone]

Uhm, my t68i from t-mobile uses sms...

If Vorizan gets the law changed...

[Anonymous Coward]

When can I have my money back for this portability charge? (Universal Connectivity fee.)

Hell, can I just get my money back on a servic they shoul provide free of charge anyways?

Rights

[Jack Comics]

And exactly *where* in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed the right of keeping our mobile telephone number forever? I don't see the big deal here. People have changed telephone numbers for the past one hundred years, and society as we know it has moved along just fine.

People keep thinking they're entitled to more and more when they're only entitled to three basic fundamental things: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more, nothing less.

Re:Rights

[Keeper]

The purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not to enumerate all of the rights you have.

Without any laws, you have the right to do whatever you want. Laws are created to restrict your rights. The Constitution and it's ammendments purpose is to draw a line in the sand that the law cannot cross.

Re:Rights

[gekman]

"Rights" are things that are, as you said, fundamental to our existence. Inalienable, someone once wrote.

Cell phone numbers are certainly not "rights," but they are things that we PAY for, and therefore we should have some say in how they are administered. Unfortunately, it usually takes governmental action to force large corporations to do the right thing.

Re:Rights

[LMariachi]

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

Re:Rights

[Waffle Iron]

And exactly *where* in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed the right of keeping our mobile telephone number forever?

Where in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are corporations guaranteed the rights to keeping contiguous chunks of mobile telephone numbers forever?

Re:Rights

[Zak3056]

Mr. Dubois had paused. Somebody took the bait. "Sir? How about 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness'?"

"Ah, yes, the 'unalienable rights.' Each year someone quotes that magnificent poetry. Life? What 'right' to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What 'right' to life has a man who must die if he is to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of 'right'? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which man's right is 'unalienable'? And is it 'right'? As to liberty, the heroes who signed that great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called 'natural human rights' that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

"The third 'right'? -- the 'pursuit of happiness'? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can 'pursue happiness' as long as my brain lives -- but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can insure that I will catch it."

--Robert Anson Heinlein, Starship Troopers.

Now what do

[JohnnyGTO]

I do ? I was going to switch from AT&T and go with Verizon for better coverage on the NorthWest and SouthWest US. Any ideas of good companies ?

Re:Now what do

[bmetzler]

I do ? I was going to switch from AT&T and go with Verizon for better coverage on the NorthWest and SouthWest US

Switch.

If the have better coverage, then they have better coverage. You pay them, they give you a service. As long as you are happy with that relationship, everything should be fine.

Ok, you might not agree with *all* of their business decisions. That's fine. I don't agree with all the business decisions that companies make that I do business with. And perhaps sometimes you should base your decisions on their business decisions. But for me, this is not one of those times.

Capitalism for me is me exchanging money for an equivalent or acceptable product of service. As long as that happens, I am happy, regardless of what other decisions that company makes.

BTW, I have used Verizon for a year and a half now.

-Brent

Re:the text

[L7_]

probably too much white space.

*shrug*

Re:US Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but gas is a lot cheaper here.

Generally, I see two issues...

[mixy1plik]

Wireless adoption has, to be sure, grown in leaps and bounds over the last few years. I remember my first cell phone at the end of '97. I was headed off to college and I picked up a Nokia 252 (Verizon Wireless, in VT). Aside from the general lack of good deals on plans it was still a relatively new deal for most people. Seeing what you get now it quite impressive in comparison, but it's crazy you're so locked with one provider.

The two issues I think are number portability as well as the fundamental fact that you still pay for incoming calls. The wireless industry has claimed essentially we don't want it, which is quite silly. I'm glad the FCC won this time, because I'm somewhat unhappy with my current carrier. Since switching to digital at the beginning of '99, I have kept the same number. I want to move to another carrier but, like many, I have an established number that I want to keep. Use an online voicemail service as my home number and it's great not getting solicitors waking me up at 7am. Switching to a provider with better coverage in my area will make my life so much easier- and I keep my number!

easy number portability

[kwiqsilver]

Wouldn't it be easy to provide number portability if phone numbers were more of an alias?
If we had an equivalent to DNS for phones, you could have some character string represent your phone, the equivalent of an IP address represent the service contract you have with your provider, and the hardware address represent that particular piece of hardware.
Switching providers while retaining your number (and even your phone if they use the same protocols) would be as easy as switching slashdot.org's internet provider.

Re:easy number portability

[Xochil]

That's generally how 1-800 numbers function. They are "aliases" of sorts which always point to real NPA-NXX numbers....except the person being called gets to pick up the ld fees.

Re:US Europe

[qtp]

I believe you are feeding the trolls.

AFAICT, Seth is a U.S. citizen living in the U.S.

(and rather funny at times)

In the meantime...

[hardeight]

you can use forwardportal.com to forward your number.
It's fairly new, i think, but some of my friends have listed in it.

(thought I'd put this again at the top)

Associated Cost

[qtp]

Costs Associated with Implementing Portable Numbers, by percent:

10% Tecnical Implementation
90% Lost Business

In other words, "our business model is threatened by new technology, lets lobby to have our business model mandated by law."

Prior Art:

MPAA
RIAA
Microsoft

"Or maybe we should sue someone."

Prior Art:

SCO

Anyone see a trend in the corporate culture?

Re:Associated Cost

[typobox43]

On the other hand, that lost business has to go somewhere. As in, to the other companies. So it follows that since all of the companies are losing business over this, they will all get it back, just as different customers... in other words, this is really offset by everyone who will be leaving their other providers.

Re:the text

[TheRaven64]

was gonna post the text from the pdf, but it couldn't pass the junk filter. What does that tell you?

That you're a karma whore?

Bad ethics is often great business.

[siskbc]

A company has obligations to it's shareholders, it's customers and it's employees. Any company that decides to screw one of those three interests for the others will get around to screwing everyone. When you think it's OK to screw people, you screw everyone.

First, a company has obligations to it's shareholders, period. You can say they should have obligations to the others, and that it may ultimately hurt them to disregard the others, but bottom-line, a corporation's job is to make money and obey the law. Nothing else.

Anti competitive behavior screws all three interests at the same time. It screws the share holder by driving out other legitimate investments. It screws the customer by monopoly rents. It screws the employees by destroying competitive employers.

I'll grant the last two, but since the company doesn't care anyway, it's immaterial. The question is, does anti-competitive behavior screw the shareholders? And the answer, assuming they don't do it illegally, is usually no. MSFT seems to do well by it. Utilities do fine. Fact is, the only time it hurts them is if/when they lose the monopoly and they don't know how to compete. But at that point, they've lost anyway so it doesn't matter.

Anti competitive behavior also leads to stagnation, which screws all three intersts again by blocking legitimate industry growth.

Well, again, industry stagnation is a great thing if you have a monopoly - it allows you to maintain revenue without spending money on R&D. Again, MSFT. Detroit automakers in the 70's before Japan moved in (oligopoly instead of monopoly, but worked the same). Works out great. If you're on top, the best thing you can do is freeze the conditions of the game. Hell, that's just common sense, and any CEO who wouldn't do everything in their power to maintain a functional monopoly is an idiot.

I'm not saying this is my worldview of how things should be, but rather how they are. I think the world would be a great place if companies were led by caring, touchy-feely CEO's, but that doesn't make money so it won't happen. I know we all want good ethics to be good business and vice-versa, but wanting it doesn't making it so, and crafting arguments to support that position doesn't make it any more so either. Fact is, our system isn't one that's set up to foster kindness.

And for what it's worth, if you want to see badly treated employees, find a company in a competitive market with razor-thin margins - they're forced to treat their customers *so well* they have no resources to treat employees well even if they wanted. So it could be said that big, bloated monopolies have the best chance, if not the inclination, to treat their employees very well.

While you have him on the phone...

[siskbc]

Could you get Mutti's strudel recipe? I hear he's tight with her.

The race is on!

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell phone number portability or HDTV on every channel.......
GO!

It's not that easy, but it's ready

[Anonymous Coward]

This has been possible on the network side for years. There are two numbers associated with each subscriber a MIN (Mobile Identification Number) and a MDN (Mobile Directory Number). The MIN is owned by the carrier the MDN can be owned by the subscriber (apparently starting this fall sometime).
Today, both MIN and MDN are exactly the same. When there is portability, the MDN can go with the subscriber to a different carrier, but the MIN stays with the carrier and probably gets reassigned to a new sub. The MIN is used for routing in the network, the MDN is used for dialing.

We can do something to stop this...

[Markmarkmark]

Here is the contact info for the two representatives mentioned in the article as possibly favoring an extension. It sounds like they are floating a trial balloon to see if they can get away with supporting another extension (and hence get a nice campaign contribution from the Celcos). Getting a flood of responses right now can make a big difference. Send them a fax or letter, it works much, much better than emails. Below is the letter I'm sending but drafting your own comments is best. /.ers have never had trouble expressing themselves :)

Representative Fred Upton
2161 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
202 225-3761
202 225-2986 fax

John Shimkus
513 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5271
Fax: (202) 225-5880

Dear Representative Upton,

I read with dismay and considerable disbelief your comments regarding the possibility of extending, yet again, cellular number portability. As you know, this has been mandated since 1996 and extended three times since 1999. To even consider another extension as sought by the largest cellular providers is simply ludicrous. Your constituents have been waiting, and waiting and waiting for years as the cellular companies have trotted out increasingly creative excuses to maintain this anti-competitive and illegitimate hold on consumers. Granting another extension on top of all the others goes against the interest of voting consumers and does not pass even the most basic âoesmellâ test.

Implementing number portability will not divert funds from other projects as claimed because the cellular companies can charge for this new service. In fact, they will make money by offering portability, just not as much as they are now making by extracting over-market prices from customers who are having their phone number held hostage. Everyone from the FCC, the courts, the media, analysts and even Congress itself, agree that consumers will get better value and service in a frictionless free market. To perpetuate this sitation, is to artificially prevent a cellular company that provides better value and service from gaining the customers it deserves. This has the effect of sheltering the larger players from competition while removing incentives for investment, innovation and excellence. It is interesting that some cellular companies want further extensions and some do not. Now that the FCC and courts will no longer entertain their increasingly fantastic arguments, they are seeking to legislate the unfair competitive advantage they cannot maintain any other way. The massive funds already spent by the celcos lobbying to continue holding consumers hostage would be more wisely invested in better service so their customers won't be so desperate to escape.

This issue has grown increasingly high profile. Each extension has focused more eyes on the actions of everyone involved. It is now a common topic of discussion among your constituents, who are expecting to finally enjoy the relief that has been promised yet delayed for so long.

Re:We can do something to stop this...

[Markmarkmark]

I mis-typed Upton's fax number. It's actually: 202 225-4986

Re:US Europe

[megsaint]

Um, we call them cell phones because they use cellular antennas, also known as cell towers. Yes, they are mobile but the cell sites are still sitting just where they were. And digital is just a subset of cellular.

Lies, lies, lies, yeah!!

[Anonymous Coward]

They are already portable. My girlfriend works at a certain 3-letter telecommunications company striving back towards profitability, and wireless carriers have been LNP (local number portability) capable since November 2002. This is when they started donating number blocks on a voluntary basis (used to be in counts of 10,000, but is now in counts of 1000) to the number pool. All carriers (who have needed them) have received wireless numbers from the pool, and have donated them into the number pool when necessary. Pooling has been going on since 1998 on a voluntary basis (and is impossible unless the number is LNP-capable), this means that all the carriers basically put the numbers in a pool (very inventive name, eh?) and take them as they need them. And yes, number porting can be done while the number is "live", or already assigned to someone.

They are stalling because they're worried they'll lose customers due to bad service. Hmm, wonder why that is??? ;-)

Re:Lies, lies, lies, yeah!!

[Anonymous Coward]

LNP is not the same as number pooling. And vice versa.

Number pooling just changes things so that blocks can be issued in 1000 number chunks instead of 10,000. Historically, routing in based on the NPA-NXX (generally). Under number pooling it is based on NPA-NXX-X (generally).

Under LNP, during the course of completing a call if a number is determined to be ported, a lookup is performed and a local routing number (LRN) is returned. This LRN is then used to route the call to the correct switch and terminate the call.

NPA-NXX: Area code-prefix
NPA-NXX-X: Area code-prefix-thousands digit

Re:Lies, lies, lies, yeah!!

[klui]

It's unfortunate that the wireless companies would stop backpeddling unless the U.S. government sues them.

Re:US Europe

[Odin's Raven]

2. We pay for incoming calls because it is worth it to make it appear as if people want to talk to us. Remember, this is America, where status is much easier to buy.

That's one way to look at it, I suppose. But also consider that one of the reasons that telemarketers aren't allowed to call your cell phone is because, under the current model, that would be cost shifting -- i.e., you're paying for the vast majority of the cost of receiving an unsolicited (and generally unwanted) phone call.

I'm currently a telecommuter -- i.e., I put in my 10-12 hrs a day from home now instead of driving to an office to do the same thing. :-) Before I started doing this, I never realized how many calls I got at home during the course of a typical day. Now that I'm home more often, I realize that I get far more telemarketing calls than spam emails on an average day. Enough so that I'm now willing to pay extra for caller ID -- none of the people I actually need to talk to come through with an ID of "unavailable".

Imagine if the caller paid the cost of calling your cell phone. Then it'd no longer be a case of price shifting if someone called you out of the blue with a fascinating deal on residing your home, refinancing your house, etc etc etc.

Having the caller pay the full cost of cellphone calls is a telemarketer's wet dream.

So for some, paying for incoming might be a status symbol. For me, it's a way to keep my cellphone open for its intended purpose -- giving people I want/need to keep in contact with a way to get in touch with me, regardless of whether I'm at home, on the road for work, or just doing a little relaxing rock climbing. My cellphone is most specifically not a way for every blithering idiot with an autodialer to annoy the hell out of me -- that's what my landline's for. ;-)

Go with verizon

[Bruha]

Verizon has the largest wireless footprint in the US while AT&T and others do not work well once you're away from the interstates.

You definately dont want to pay the national roaming network.

Verizon != Verizon Wireless

[Bruha]

Verizon Wireless is not Verizon, VZW was formed by the former Bell Alantic, GTE Mobilenet and Vodaphone Airtouch companies merging together.

Re:At least...

[lukew]

Well articulated pseudo racism is still racism you fucking arrogant jerk.

Re:US Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Seth Finklestein is not European. He is American.

Assuming that this is the Seth Finklestein who is stalking Michael Sims of Slashdot.

If your like me..

[craigtay]

You switched cell phones specifically to get a new phone number. Stupid restraining orders..

That's Nothing Compared to the FCC

[weston]

If you think that's confusing, just wait for your head to spin when you consider that this FCC that's helping us out here is the same FCC currently headed by Michael "Evil Spawn of Satan and Corporate America" Powell. You know, the one blithely removing rules about media consolidation so that your only news outlets will by owned by AOLCNNTimeDisneyWarnerMSurdochNBC (ok, NPR and OSDN might still exist, but you know, if a tree falls in the woods...)

haha ef pee! haha thats funny@@!!1

[Anonymous Coward]

no really, that was amazingly clever. You dumb nigger. hjkl

Did I hurt someone's feelings?

[siskbc]

Well articulated pseudo racism is still racism you fucking arrogant jerk.

Racism? I wasn't aware that Europeans had become so repulsive as to form a separate race of foul-smelling people with crooked teeth. At least I was giving them the benefit of belonging to one of Earth's three major races (and the same as that which I belong to, incidently). So it seems to me as you're the greater racist - listening to you, I'd expect full speciation is right around the corner!

For what it's worth, where were you when the European contingent was insulting Americans? Laughing, I expect? Quite hypocritical to only defend the "racism" one way.

Seriously, though, it seems you're taking this a bit too seriously, unless you're a foul-smelling Eurpoean woman with crooked teeth and hairy legs, at which point I will graciously apologize. If not, learn to laugh at yourself - I make fun of stupid Americans when I'm not here trolling for sensitive Europeans bearing the weight of their collective continental inferiority complex.

And thanks for the well-articulated bit. That was very touching. You really need to work on the insults, though - "fucking arrogant jerk" is so played. I could give you some better suggestions if you like.

Only temporary, selling your soul is just that

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations also have obligations to the state and nation in which they are GRANTED their incorporation. They have duties and responsibilites IN GENERAL to the people who make up those states and nations to be not only profitable for themselves and shareholders, but to be of the PUBLIC BENEFIT. When they tend to always hold their profits over the public benefit,or ignore public benefit and actually become a public detriment and impediment and nuisance or threat, then that means THEY HAVE BECOME THAT,they need to have their incorporation charter REVOKED immediately, the officers needs be charged with crimes, and the shareholders are free to retire home, to enjoy not only the hand rubbing glee and gloating over PROFITS they expect as their due, but to also enjoy their opportunity to weep over their gross stupidity and greed in letting conmen, scoundrels and thieves run their companies,in turning a blind eye to their creations habits and actions, and maybe that would make them pay more attention to business ethics and laws and morality when "investing" or when acting as "corporate officers" with actual bona fide duties rather than thinking that their business license is a license to steal and cheat and lie and bribe. Maybe instead of ONLY thinking of their purse, once in a while they might grab a clue or two on civilised behavior. Just because they have expensive suits does not mean they are gentlemen or honorable..it just means they are ludicrously dressed pirates with ribbons on the necks like clowns, the modern uniform of the rape and pillage and loot mercenary class.

Following the laws as originally written and especially as originally intentioned would have sorted out this nonsense long ago. PITY it is not done.

Our nation (and others to be fair) would work a lot better if ALL the laws were applied equitably,as designed, and if they were fair written in english,and not blacks law bottom feeder mumbling gibberish, a collection of sounds and grunts ans shrillities unlike any civilised tongue, designed so that only demons and cretins may recognize the alleged "words", and if all business were conducted by named human beings instead of artificial persons,or golems to be most accurate, and not like it is now with just some of the laws applied most of the time to mostly poor people, with these counterfeit human "corpse-orations", poli-tick-sians and bureaubribeocrats hardly ever having any of the "laws" applied to them in any meaningful manner.

We have a few examples, like lately enron, worldcom, martha stewart "inc" whatever absurdity that is, those sorts of things are the norm, not just isolated cases, and only unique because they got officially "caught",because they probably missed a bribe or three as payment-tribute to some other demon.

A slew of top corporations have been caught lately "trading with the enemy",of very little note in passing on the respectable "walled off from reality street" reports of the business demons scandal rags, that expound most eloquently of the import of digits and confounding math to the absurd level, those sorts of enterprises, but note: those axis of evil nations, and trading with them, despite the oh so pomposity of the grinning baboons of power who strut and preen and instititute the causus belli of righteous wrath on a whim of fantasy, who seek to "save us" from their imaginary boogermen, none of their fellow board-demons seems to have been "fingered".. What has happened to those powerful economic "terrorists" allegedly nabbed? Have any of their corporate officers or "share"holders been charged with a crime, have they been "detained"? Have the "share"holders got to "share" in disappearing to some wretched cage somewhere to be interrogated with "stress and duress" techniques, to make them talk, to force them to give up the names of their fellow plotters of ill? Hmm?...

NOTHING, a small sum of central bank digits transfers to some other obscure account that is loosely labeled "government" and they are saved! Raptured to forgiveness! The

Re:Only temporary, selling your soul is just that

[Bull999999]

While people like you bitch and complain, people like Dell turned $1000 into a multi-billion dollar company. And companies like M$ and Apple started with a whimper, not a bang.

"When they tend to always hold their profits"

That's what distingushes for-profit businesses from non-profit organizations.

Re:US Europe

[msim]

Someone is Stalking me????? WTF?!?!?!

Re:US Europe

[msim]

I hope you don't get *me* confused with the other guy your hunting down.

Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

In Denmark we've been able to do this for the past two years. Without paying any fees for it.

The authorities forced the telcoms to support it. They weren't all to happy about it, but they just got forced to support it. Why don't they do the same in the US of A and catch up to the europeans??

You fools, USA is far behind.... sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

In sweden we've had number portability for 2 years, 3G-phones are allready operational and now you can order 26MBit VDSL-broadband in the major cities (around $35/month), and you get 5 permanent ip's too!

Vote your conscience.

[Eideteker]

If you don't like it, don't buy it. It's really that simple. If you've got a better idea, formulate a business plan and get some financing.

It's a free country, but that doesn't mean you don't have to work to get what you want.

Think of it like an IP address

[autopr0n]

A phone number isn't just a 'name' like DNS, it's more like an IP address that contains information on how to rout the call. A certain prefix is probably assigned to each company, so number portability might require 'forwarding' the calls to a new party.

It could cost a lot to change all the routing system to accommodate this. I also wouldn't be surprised if the phone companies kept this from being implemented for quite a while, until the FCC starts fining them or something.

Single redirector

[autopr0n]

If you move from Verison to Sprint to Cingular, you could simply have Verison update their forwarder to your Cingular number, so no one would ever need more then two numbers. Also you could create newer, longer numbers which are only used to forward too, so your 515-555-1234 number could link to 999-004-1234567890 or something

Agreed, (sort of...)

[qtp]

I was refering to the sense of entitlement that companies who are dependant on an anticompetative business model. The lowering cost of infrastructure that Open Source and Free Software enables threatens businesses that previously could count on a "locked in" customer base.

OTOH, the portability of cell phone numbers is likely to cause customers to gravitate towards the company that owns the largest network. Perhaps cell phone number portability would create competition only in a market where the towers and network were owned by companies not offering the service to end users, but were charging the service providers for access to a market.

It seems that these businesses are willing to do anything to retain thier customer base except for offer better terms to thier customers. Cingular (T-Mobile, VoiceStream, whatever) is beginning to show a similar attitude to thier customers as they increasingly own a larger portion of the SMS network. When they own 80% or more of the towers in a given market, they can afford to act as a monopoly.

--qtp

Can someone tell me...

[DesertFalcon]

what exactly "number portability" means? Or is this a case where I should RTFM (or STFG, Search The F*#$ Google)?

Re:Can someone tell me...

[TeddyR]

It means that if your cell phone number is (999) 555-0999, then you can keep that number even if you start out with sprint and move to verizon or att or whomever... (barring contract clauses that may say you will be charged $XXX for leaving before the plan period ends...) of course there will be a "fee" associated with having a portable number...

Re:Can someone tell me...

[DesertFalcon]

Oooohhh, cool stuff. Gonna re-read that article now that I know what it's talking about.

Do you have a job?

[siskbc]

My Lord, I'm sure there is a point in that rant there somewhere, but it was well-camouflaged. Here's the thing: first, you've proven my point about talking about what *should* be rather than what *is.* There is an obligation to follow the law, but you can't legislate some general touchy-feely requirement to follow some nebulous moral code.

The only point in your rant that I will address is the following:

Following the laws as originally written and especially as originally intentioned would have sorted out this nonsense long ago. PITY it is not done.

First, of what "laws" are you speaking? Second, if following the law is sufficient, you nullify the rest of your manifesto. Third, you're not in a position to know any "intent" of a law that didn't make it into the written version unless you are a Congressman.

I would also like to mention that the socialism thing is very passe. Most people have realized that without the possibility of making money, no one has any motivation because people are lazy as hell. And do you hold a job? Because if so, you're "selling your soul" too. Nobody gets something for nothing. Nobody does something for nothing. It's called the real world. Join it and start taking your meds, AC.

The US way behind as usual

[Deaths Hand]

Unsuprisingly, the US is way behind again when it comes to mobile technology.

We've had portable numbers in the UK market since the 1st of Jan 1999. See some of the links on Oftel's website (our government telecommunications regulator).

I've had number portability for years..

[grogglefroth]

.. Toll free numbers. Yes, I pay for incoming calls.
But I generally pay $5 a month in usage. In return, the people I want to have my number, have one that will Always Just Friggen Work. I can change toll free providers and take my numbers (plural - one for home, one for cell) with me. I can move (houses, cell carriers) and just have the toll free provider repoint the toll free numbers.

Oh, and stupid bonus, the inlaws no longer call collect, they call the toll free #, which is several orders of magnitude cheaper. Paying for them to talk to my wife is a small price to pay compared to when the inlaws lived in town...

For *long* calls I have people call me back at whatever direct number I happen to be sitting near (both for cost reasons, and for call clarity), or I call them back since my long distance on the cellular is part of the plan.

Just remember this does come down to tanstaafl. I've had my portability for years; I've been paying for it. Now ya'll are forcing *everyone* to have the "benefits" (including the carriers tacking on another charge because they CAN) of portability.

They are different companies

[goofrider]

Those are 2 different companies. One is Verizon Communications and the other is Verizon Wireless (a joint venture co-owned by Verizon and Vodafone).