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

[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.

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.

SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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?

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

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...

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!

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??? ;-)