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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."
Excuse me, why are you telling me that Hell is hot? Why should I care?
PS: fist post fools
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.
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http://www.hellection.com
Thank god you checked it every day, otherwise this would never have happened.
Yes, now I can keep getting the same spam calls forever, even when I change companies.
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...
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
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
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...
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
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.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
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 :)
"I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin"
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...
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.
Zaphod B
When duplication is outlawed, only outlaws will have
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.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
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.
Why do I h8 apple?
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.
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.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Please help metamoderate.
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!
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.
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.
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.
"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty..."
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.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
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!
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.
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)
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?
Read, L
That you're a karma whore?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
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.
SPAM
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.
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???
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.
You switched cell phones specifically to get a new phone number. Stupid restraining orders..
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
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
Read, L