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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)."
Finally... I'm so sick of having to either change my phone number or pay higher rates every year when my contract runs up. Now when there's a better calling plan for me I can take my phone number with me so I don't have to give a new number out to 700 different people :D
Maybe now instead of holding our phone numbers hostage, the phone companies will actually have to offer better plans to keep our business. Mmmmm more minutes for less money = more money for beer... Mmmmm beer.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
..that its complying? How is this news? I mean, whats the worst Verizon can do to the gov? Would someone enlighten me, here?
"The most looniest, zaniest, spontaneous, sporadic Impulsive thinker, compulsive drinker, addict"
This is good news for the consumer. I've held off switching carriers precisely because I would be forced to get a new number - losing the one everyone's used to reaching me at. Yeah, yeah, I could try to update people, but yer always gonna miss someone. Hopefully this will encourage the carriers to improve their service to stay competitive rather than relying on customers who are locked in.
What my vonage service needs to do is offer a portability type service, where I can get VoiP mobile....having 1 number for both home and cell, while still taking advantage of VoiP and my 25.99 flat rate fee. My cel phone is almost DOUBLE what my vonage at home bill is :(
Will this increase competition and lower the monthly rates? I know i'll be going back to voicestream (with my current sprint phone #) once this gets going
Most likely not. Most providers have announced they will pass the cost of number portability onto their customers, hidden within the already large number of fees and taxes one sees on their monthly bill.
This legislation is excellent, unfortunately the buck is passed to the end consumer.
I've been stuck in it for a few months now, and frankly, I don't see anything happening anytime soon after this ruling. It's going to take at least a whole year!
</rantish post>
1. You can't port your number between providers.
Elsewhere, you can port your numbers in days with just a couple of phone calls.
2. You have to ditch your handset if you do switch providers.
In the rest of the world, phones have SIM cards (small smart cards). To change provider all you have to do is get a new SIM card, which costs around $7-15, depending on the provider that you're switching to.
3. You have to pay for the priviledge of being contacted.
Elsewhere, Caller Party Pays (CPP) is standard. If your boss calls you and jabbers on for an hour why should you foot the bill?
4. Numbers are geographically fixed.
Elsewhere, mobile numbers are non-geographic, which means that if you have to move from one end of the country to another, your mobile number doesn't have to change. Indeed, in most countries you can tell if you're calling a mobile number because it will have a unique, non-geographical area code - eg, in the UK all mobile numbers begin with 07xxx.
Seriously, mobile telephony seems to be one area where the US is playing catch-up.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Apparently Verizon won't be charging any fee for number portability. That might light the fire under the other telcos to do the same to remain attractive...........
This is really a surprise. I have no idea what Verizon is thinking. At least around here Verizon has, in my opinion, the worst service available (and, I'm qualified to make that assessment by the virtue of knowing them back when they called themselves Bell Atlantic/NYNEX mobile), and you'd expect them to oppose anything that would make it easier for their captive customers to flee to the dozens of available competitors.
First of all, they charge for their phones. AT&T, Sprint, and others give you a free phone with a service contract. Then, their phones are crap. Twice did my phone crap out after the warranty period expired. Each time they made me pay for a replacement phone, and locked me into another contract. On two other occasions the phone blew up while it was still under warranty. Each time, I had to wait two weeks to get the phone back, and neither time would they give me a loaner, so I was without service all that time.
Finally, last year I told them to screw off. Yes, I had to get a new number, oh well. My current contract expires in October, and I'm really looking forward to the Nov 24 date.
Just for laughs, last year I went into a local Verizon dealer. He tried to sell me a phone for sixty bucks, and a two-year contract. I told him the AT&T guy across the street is giving out free phones, with a one-year contract. The Verizon guy tried to tell me that you get what you're paying for. I just laughed, and went across the street.
I don't really know what Verizon is thinking. Maybe they think that their marketing can overcome their shitty service.
I've been reasonably happy with Verizon -- I started out with PrimeCo (Dallas), and was expecting the worst when the former GTE took over (having had bad technical experiences with GTE as a local telco).
I was pretty peeved last year, though. I wanted to upgrade my wife's phone to a BREW-enabled handset (for Christmas), but my contract wasn't close enough to expiration. I spent quite a while talking to customer service reps and told them that as soon as Number Portability came in November 2003, I was outta there.
The rep's response was, "What's 'Number Portability'?"
I suspect that this issue is way below Jo(e) Consumer's radar screen... especially if the carriers' own reps don't yet have a scripted answer to the concept. But that won't last long! By making a U-Turn on the portability issue, Verizon is now poised to spend the next five months "educating" the consumer about their upcoming portability rights... regardless of whether their competitors are on board.
Imagine the buzz to be generated by a full-page ad from Verizon: Cingular, Sprint, and AT&T want to lock you in. Verizon is fighting to set you free. For once, good business sense happens to be on the right side of the debate.
By the way, I'm over my tiff with Verizon. I ended up upgrading (with a a cheapie phone) when the contract expired, so I'm with 'em another couple of years, come hell or high water.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
Keeping your cell phone when switching service!
I have a drawer full of old cell phones that I paid THOUSANDS of dollars for over the years. Around here cell companies pop up and fold up just as quick. NONE of the local companies here have decent service or rates.
So people here, me included switch service trying to go with the best one.
"We're sorry, you can't use *their* phone with out service, you'll have to buy a NEW phone from *us* to use with our service."
I would really like to see a stop put to this sort of thing too. And when company X packs up and leaves town you can't sell your old phone to anyone for use with any other company.
That's the REAL pisser about switching service!
If we're not going to get out cheap-ish VOIP equipment, why not use some sort of a Phone DNS.
Have a number 1-800-DNS-HOME or something and have an ID. No matter what new carrier you have, you jsut call up and goto administrator on your acct and change the phone pointer.
Yeah, it'll cost, but Verizon, Cingular, et al, wont complain as they cant.
From the article:
"The case was lost in court and now it's time to get on with providing customers with what we believe they want." - Dennis Strigl, the president and chief executive of Verizon Wireless
It's nice to see Verizon openly admit that thier first priority is themselves, not their customers.
My
Limekiller
Well, considering that I have a "national" plan on my cell phone, I don't really need to change my phone number if I move, every call to or from my phone is a local call as long as I am within the USA. I spent more than half of this year in Boston and Philadelphia, while retaining my NJ-area-code number.
As for the rest of your comments. I agree wholeheartedly.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I'm really confused about this, because I don't quite understand how phone numbers are bought and sold by companies.
Say I get broadband at home from Bob's Broadband. I get a static IP address of 1.2.3.4. Later on I decide I can get a better price from Joe's Broadband. I switch, and they give me the IP address 5.6.7.8. This is unfair! Why can't I keep my 1.2.3.4 IP address?!
Anyone who can tell a router from a hole in the ground knows the answer to this one - Bob's Broadband owns the subset of IP addresses in which 1.2.3.4 is located. If I were to keep my IP address and sign up with Joe's Broadband, there would be a lot of awkward router configuration going on at both ISP's.
Likewise, if a cellular provider buys a block of phone numbers, can they have them taken away without any compensation? I know my cellular contract doesn't say I own the number, it just says I get to use it. Can somebody fill me in?
grep -ri 'should work'
Carrier's already have problems with their respective services and now everyone expects this to just work perfectly because the FCC says so.
I wouldn't port my number unless absolutely necessary. I think people will have a lot less trouble if they just cut their losses and go with a new number. Keep the old number's voice mail in service for a month or so and leave the new number as the message.
What's really the difference here between telling the cell phone companies "screw your prefix-based infrastructures, be able to accept anyone's phone numbers on your system" and telling ISPs "screw your silly notions of IP address blocks, be able to accept anyone's IP address on your system".
I have a block of static IPs from my ISP. If I change ISPs, according to the logical conclusion of this ruling, I should be able to keep my block of IP addresses.
Doesn't that raise any alarm bells? Doesn't that just sound preposterous, insane?
"Oh," you say. "But we have DNS! You just point your DNS to your new IP addresses (and reconfigure all your machines, etc). There is no DNS for phone numbers! So there!"
Uh... we _do_ have DNS for phone numbers. It's called "The Telephone Book", also known as "Directory Assistance" or "411", etc. Maybe we should be working on a better way to dial people up based on unchanging things like their names, kept and distributed much in the same way as DNS. You register your name with the phone company as your registrar and they assign you a phone number out of the block of phone numbers they have available. Anyone dialing "MORTAR COMBAT 123" would first hit a global registry (if the local registry didn't have a cache hit) saying that "Oh, Verizon is the registrar for "MORTAR COMBAT 123" at this time, and the request hits Verizon's registry which 'dials' the current physical phone number. Perhaps you pay a fee to the global registrar (through your local registrar) for this registration service.
If you change telephone providers, you should change phone numbers because provider infrastructure is set up based on rules of blocks of numbers. Following this path of 'take your number with you' leads into a nasty den of big, big trouble for IP addresses and ISPs because the law will make no distinction based on "technical difficulties" which it doesn't understand.
A phone number isn't some ethereal label -- it is a formatted number in which prefixes mean something significant, and upon which billions of dollars of infrastructure has been built.
MORTAR COMBAT!
And look at what the EU government mandates have done to the European carriers.
UMTS has proven to be a nightmare for every carrier that has implemented it. NTT DoCoMo tried to roll out UMTS and their name is now mud in Japan because of people getting their hands burned by handsets that consumed too much power. GSM isn't too hot either. oops...
Meanwhile, in the USA, the best technology (CDMA) won over GSM. Every GSM provider in the nation is struggling. Meanwhile Verizon, a CDMA provider, is managing to charge 1.5 times as much per minute or more than the others because of the fact that they have superior coverage and call quality.
Yes, I'm a Verizon customer. Yes, I'm paying much more per minute than I would on Cingular or AT&T. Yes, I'm glad I am when I can use my phone and a Cingular or AT&T customer wouldn't get coverage for miles.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
You have a drawer full of them? (all of which, I assume, you're not using)
Why don't you donate them? Many types of charities take cell phones as donations, as well as your local police department, who usually allocates them to battered women shelters (to give them an "anonymous" phone to keep in touch with/a way to call for help, etc.). Neither my wife nor I have any of our old cellphones.
If the act of giving isn't enough for you, remember you can always deduct the donation from your taxes...
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?
It cost hundreds of dollars for a cell phone company to add a new customer. That includes advertising and the free cell phone you got with that contract. You don't seriously think AT&T Wireless just absorbs the cost of that $200 cell phone, do you?
Of course, if you don't want to sign a 1-2 year contract, you don't have to. You'll just have to buy your own phone.