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Verizon Drops Opposition To Cell-Number Portability
EyesWideOpen writes "Verizon has announced (NYTimes - free registration required) that it would drop its opposition to the proposed F.C.C plan that would allow callers to keep their wireless phone numbers when they switch carriers. Verizon, the nation's largest mobile phone company, was seen as 'the standard-bearer of the opposition against wireless number portability' but has shifted it's position citing the recent court ruling as the reason for doing so. The F.C.C has set a deadline of November 24 for it's rules to take effect. Other mobile phone companies such as Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless are still expected to appeal the court ruling. Several previous stories on number portability here(1), here(2), here(3), here(4), and here(5)."
It's obviously a move to gain consumer support and get customers to switch. Now that they've got their opposition fighting the FCC, they can say: "Look, we're the biggest PROPONENTS of cell number portability, and our competition is still fighting it. So switch to us!"
I'm sick to death cell carriers and their sleaziness -- it's like the long distance carrier battles of the 90s all over again. You guys offer a commodity product, compete on price because nothing else differentiates you anymore.
My journal has hot
Which leads me to question: Is Verizon just recognizing the situation was hopeless and acting responsibly/accordingly, or are they disarming their enemies only to lobby at the last minute for something (exhorbitant fees, special restrictions) and getting it passed while everyone else is fumbling? Or are they using their switch to gain some advantage over their wireless competitors(2. ??? 3. Profit)?
It's obvious that the anti-portability crowd all have their roots as monopolistic phone companies. Their out look is always pessimistic, that every change will result in customers leaving.
They should be looking at these changes as OPPORTUNITIES to GAIN market share, not as changes that will eat their lunch. If they don't change their outlook they will be crushed by competitors.
What I would like to see are shorter contract terms. WHY should I be locked into a 1 or 2 year contract with an early termination fee? You don't see that on just about any other consumer service (including land-line phones). As a matter of fact, I remember reading somewhere that they *can't* legally do that (after a certain amount of time), anyone care to enlighten me?
Finally... I'm so sick of having to either change my phone number or pay higher rates every year when my contract runs up.
What about the *hardware*? It would be nice if the gov't dropped the campaign donations in favor of legislation requiring compatible hardware on all networks. If I change my carrier, then I need to buy a new phone. That isn't a big deal if you've got entry-level hardware but some of these more elaborate gadjets pretty much lock you into the carrier unless you are willing to eat the cost of buying a comparable replacement.
Right now, I just wish that the cellular carriers would provide hardware to plug into my house POTS wiring. I subscribed to Ameritech/SBC for only two months before I realized that their customer inservice was not going to work for me. This was prior to the monopoly on local phone carriers. At the time, it made sense to swap to cellular and I've never had a problem but it would be nice to have a regular phone system at home. It would be nice if I could just put my cell phone on a docking station/charger when I came home and calls could ring into the home system.
I'm just glad to be without SBC/Ameritech. I've never hated a business with such passion.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
I dont think its a right but number portability is that much more important to people than an IP address. With IPs you can alter your your DNS and map your hostname to whatever new IP you have. I don't recall an alias directory for names and cell phone numbers anywhere - do you?
> no registration required if it is copied and posted here, tough guy
Then this is just copyright infringement. Articles are mirrored to help the publisher's servers cope with the press of requests that a slashdot mention brings. It's a good thing, because the publisher continues to have his content delivered to interested readers. However, mirroring an article just to get around a publisher's terms -- that's theft.
The Push-To-Talk feature of Nextel's service has never really attracted the average user, but it's been a huge selling point for business customers. Think of construction sites or warehouses where you might use a walkie-talkie, and replace it with an inexpensive system that lets you two-way with anyone regarless of their location..
AND, lets you choose one-to-one communication, or one-to-many. You can use the same device to call Joe that you use to talk amongst a group of five people, totally ad-hoc.
It would be nice if the gov't dropped the campaign donations in favor of legislation requiring compatible hardware on all networks.
No it wouldn't, comrade.
If we had to wait for government approvals for technological changes, we'd all still be using AMPS.
One of those old Motorola bricks would solve your universal compatibility problems, after all.
Spoken like someone whose never used push-to-talk!
It is great for at least two things:
1. Herding the cats for meetings. Instead of calling the two or three people on engineering time (like me... always 10 minutes late:)), waiting for the rings, talking to them for a few seconds, etc., you can just ping them with PTT and save time.
2. Getting a quick answer to quick questions. In general, if people are busy, they don't want to have long phone conversations and have a tendency to screen their calls. If you PTT them, these same people respond because they know the conversation is going to be 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes.
As far as #2, PTT seems to dispense with a lot of the social graces associated with phone conversations and cut straight to the chase.
On other counts, I agree that Nextel is an inferior technology, but PTT is a great app you have to try for a while to appreciate.
If you have an expensive phone, more than likely it is a tri-mode phone meaning it is already compatible with pretty much every network in the US, and many overseas networks as well. By law your provider has to tell you how to unlock your phone to use it with another provider. Although they deliberately make it a bit difficult, it's not too hard to get the appropriate information using google.
Disclaimer: IANATCE (I am not a telco employee)
But... I think that it used to be that phone numbers were dished out in units of 10,000. You'd get an entire exchange at once (xxx.yyy.0000->9999).
However, with cel systems coming in and such, there was suddenly a great demand for new exchanges. And they started to run out. Four cel phone carriers in an area code, now you need (at least) four new exchanges.
So instead, somebody decided that they wouldn't give out an entire exchange at once. Just a few hundred numbers within the exchange. This means that an exchange is no longer tied to a particular carrier.
If that's the case, then there's no reason that a number can't be portable. Carriers have to get used to not owning an entire exchange, and only use specific numbers within the exchange, etc.
Therefore, there's no technical reason why number portability can't be implemented.
Now, is it a right? Nope. *But*.... lots of people don't change cel service because there's a lot of inertia involved in changing your phone number. Well, sure, a college kid might not care if he has to tell two dozen friends a new number. But what if you're a businessman, and gave out your cel phone number on 10,000 business cards over the past two years? Now you're stuck with one provider.
This lets providers jerk you around a lot more than if it were a totally open market where you could say "I'm going to switch." So, it's just a nice pro-consumer move.
IP addresses and phone numbers don't really map in the way you are trying to imply. For one thing, if you actually have an IP block assigned to you, it can be advertised out of whatever ISP you wish. We do this all the time with co-lo customers, they bring their own servers and IP blocks to our data centers, and we advertise the routes appropriately so that the packets know which way to go.
In terms of DNS and phone books... Phone books are not the same as DNS, you can (theoretically) always ask for the same webpage (www.foo.com) and the DNS servers will transparently map it to the proper/current IP in the background. You don't have to know when the IP has changed, as a user, and re-look it up, like you would with a phone book.
The truth is that number portability ISN'T all that difficult, and preventing it is an artificial way of limiting churn. The wireless phone infrastructure is new enough and flexible enough that it does not have to follow the same rules/restrictions of the copper network. It is more like a large switched network...
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phone numbers cannot be compared with IP's and email addresses.
first, phone numbers were developed before there was competition in the phone market. (not that there really is any now either) but they were designed for land based phones with regional aread codes and prefixes. many houses still have the same number they got when they origanlly GOT a phone. my dad lives in the same house as his parents and they have the same number. my grandparents still refer to the number as Sylvan5-xxxx or whatever it was.
now that concept of geographically stationary phones combined with numerous different providers has changed the way phones work.
email is a pain. i hate having to change addresses. but, for a couple of dollars a month you can purchase a domain and host it. get a few people (a family) purchase your name and you can have john@doe.com for as long as you want to pay to host it.
ip's have a dns registry. thus there can only be 1 slashdot.org or google.com. however, in a phonebook there can be 30 different jeffery wong's. your phonebook DNS analogy is flawed.
your whol argument is flawed. do you work for sprint or something?
just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand!