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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
Re-write the cell-phone numbers in Java...dial once, talk anywhere or something like that, isn't that why they're putting Java on all the phones?
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
nopass:nopass
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
June 25, 2003
Verizon Quits Fight on Rule for Cellphone Numbers
By MATT RICHTEL
Verizon Wireless said yesterday that it would drop its opposition to a government plan to allow callers to keep their wireless phone numbers when they switch carriers. The about-face by Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest mobile phone company, probably means that some other mobile phone operators will have little choice but to yield to the arrangement.
Verizon, which has led a protracted, industrywide effort to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from requiring that cellphone numbers be portable from provider to provider, said it now supported F.C.C. rules scheduled to take effect on Nov. 24 and would end its legal and legislative campaign against them.
Several competitors in the wireless industry said they were surprised by Verizon's announcement and would continue to fight against the changes even without Verizon's cooperation. The industry has argued that the F.C.C. lacks the legal authority to impose portability, and that carrying out the rules would cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.
But in a speech yesterday in New York at a conference for industry analysts, Dennis Strigl, the president and chief executive of Verizon Wireless, said it was time for mobile phone carriers to "stop moaning and groaning" about the portability requirement.
Mr. Strigl said the timing of the announcement was related to a decision earlier this month by a federal appeals court rejecting the industry's argument. The wireless companies contended that the portability requirement was not necessary to protect consumers. "The case was lost in court and now it's time to get on with providing customers with what we believe they want," Mr. Strigl said in an interview. "We're wasting too much time on this."
Roger Entner, a wireless industry analyst with the Yankee Group, a market research firm, characterized Verizon's change in policy as "a 180-degree turn" that removed the single biggest obstacle to portability.
Verizon, he said, had been "the standard-bearer of the opposition against wireless number portability." And now it has "basically turned into the biggest proponent," he said.
Mr. Entner added that Verizon appeared to shift because the legal and legislative options were running out and it did not want to seem like a sore loser. "This means there is no major opposition on the carrier side to portability," he said.
That conclusion was echoed by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who has been pressing the Senate to support portability and reject the wireless industry's delaying efforts. "It pretty much ensures that by November there will be portability," Mr. Schumer said, noting that Verizon had been particularly aggressive in lobbying Congress to prevent the F.C.C. from imposing the requirement.
Mr. Entner and other industry analysts say portability will increase the number of customers who switch wireless carriers â" a trend that is already common and costly to the industry. Of the 145 million cellphone subscribers at the end of March, 40 million to 45 million will switch carriers this year, Mr. Entner said. If portability were in place, 10 million to 12 million more could be expected to switch, he said.
Mr. Entner predicted that the cost to the industry of portability would be $2 billion annually for subsidizing new handsets, activating service and paying sales commissions.
The F.C.C. has maintained that portability will be good for competition. But last July, at the industry's urging, it agreed to delay the effective date of the regulations until this coming November. It was the third such delay by the commission.
Jennifer Bowcock, a spokeswoman for Cingular Wireless, one of the companies that said they would continue to resist the requirement, said Cingular opposed portability because there were more important matters the industry should spend money on, like investments in building the wireless network.
Mark
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
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 :(
Just pretend you're GOOGLE NEWS.
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.
read the very bottom of this:
Verizon
apparently there is still a bill in congress that may delay the number change date.
As an employee of Cingular wireless, I can say that we're preparing our backend system to be able to do this. I believe all of the systems are in place, but that they're just testing the system. This could definatly spur competition in the cellular industry, and my completely unbiased (yeah, right) opinion tells me it will work to our advantage by driving more customers to us.
it should be Here(0),Here(1),Here(2),Here(3),Here(4)
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
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.
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...........
Nextel is a great example of marketing a technically inferior product as superior. And they seem to be successful at it.
The Push To Talk function takes a perfectly good full-duplex cell phone and turns it into a half-duplex walkie-talkie. They even give you a thicker and heavier phone to keep up the illusion!
Nextel fans like to point out that PTT is built into the IDEN network, and other carriers can never offer such a feature. TMobile, however, offers unlimited mobile to mobile calling for $10. You get full duplex all the way with TMobile.
Not playing catch up.
They're playing "run from the dinosaur", since they're still in Mobile Telecommunications stone age.
/. Where the truth
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!
There are several articles covering this story. Verizon states that it would cost around $0.15 per month to allow for Local Number Portability (LNP). Other carriers seem, according to the stories, to charge $1.50 - $2.00 per month for it.
Verizon now things the cost is low enough that the carriers should just absorb it. How much are you willing to pay for this ability?
Me, I think it should not be a monthly additional fee.
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.
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?
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!
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.
Some, but by no means all, phones here have SIM cards. And you *can* use them to switch providers, it's just that most providers give you a free or very very cheap phone when you sign up for a new service agreement, and it's often got newer technology/features/styles than the old phone you were previously carrying around, so most people just don't bother.
My journal has hot
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'
4. Numbers are geographically fixed.
eg, in the UK all mobile numbers begin with 07xxx
From the Cia World Fact Book:
United Kingdom: slightly smaller than Oregon
We are talking about much smaller areas here. The US is such a big country, with a lot of landmass, it is a lot harder to manage.
Billing: Another thing to think about in the number portability, is billing. For instance, I get my phone in NY, then swith providers when I move to CA and port my number. So know when I dial someplace in CA, with a NY number is that Roaming, how is the billing computed? When my friends call me from NY, they pay a local call, but how is the billing computed? That is going to be one of the major stumbling blocks to this.
To E-mail me, replace the first period in my domain with an @
If you have a mobile phone in the UK, its number will begin with 07xxx. As only mobile numbers begin with 07xxx, anyone calling you knows before they dial that it's your mobile that they are calling you on.
:)
Your mobile number will begin 07xxx irrespective of the area code of the city that you live in - whether I live in London (area code 020), Liverpool (0161) or elsewhere, my mobile number will start 07xxx.
I thought my orignal post made that clear but, for those of you with fried brains, this is the "for Dummies" version.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
NOT TRUE... STOP. IN US WE HAVE GREAT WAYS TO SEND MESSAGE... STOP. MUCH ADVANCED HERE... STOP.
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.
In response to number 2, one of the biggest problems with doing that in the US is the multiple networks for cell phones, well do have some GSM providers, but unlike Europe that's not all there is, we also do PCS and CDMS and TDMA.
PCS is proprietary so there's no switching phones from or to that service.
I had GSM service with Voicestream and now AT&T is rolling out/has rolled out GSM service so I should have been able to switch to them if I still had a cell phone by simply swapping my SIM card.
And analog is still the only option available in large parts of the wilderness which Voicestream didn't support when I was a customer because they're digital only.
Translation: Verizon has the most money to spend on lawyers and lobbyists.
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.
I'm guessing you didn't notice the sarcasm dripping from that statement???
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!
I have a month to month contrat with sprint i got, 4-5 years ago. I believe its still available, but the tend to bury it under all the contract stuff, and you baicaly wind up paying 10 bucks more. ALso, they have commercial/busisness plans that are month to month.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I believe there is a specific FCC ruling that allows carriers to recoup the costs associated with WNP from all customers (ala the Universal Service Charge that funds the requirement that local landline carriers provide service to low population areas) within a certain duration (like the next five years). This would show up on your mobile phone bill as a surcharge. IIRC, they are also specifically NOT allowed to charge individual customers for the number port itself.
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?
Mobile phone racket ??? Now you want a mobile phone with a tennis racket built into it? You crazy kids these days...
AT&T dropped a notice to me in the mail saying they are charging their customers $2 per month to handle the costs of the new mandated features.
Verisign operates a one-stop service for number portability. It's straightforward - they control the number database. You don't get a choice of registrars.
One less-known feature of this approach is that it's used for wiretapping. By messing with the routing database, calls are routed to wiretapping access points before going to their ultimate destination. Verisign offers wiretapping services to law enforcement and various other "authorities" as a commercial service, under the name NetDiscovery(tm). Coming soon: Verisign wiretapping for voice over IP!
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.
Thanks for numbering, it makes replying easier:
1: That's what this ruling is about. We'd have this feature long ago if the providers hadn't fought it so much (this regulation has been on the table for nearly 10 years)
2: Not true. Many phones here are GSM, in fact there are three major GSM providers here (AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile). Some phones are SIM locked, but you can usually harass customer support into unlocking your phone. The big reason that nobody cares over here is that most providers will give you a free phone with GPRS (or equivelent), a color screen, and all the newest goodies (camera, etc) if you sign up for a year. The Nokia 3650 is free here when you sign up for a year, I understand that it is $200-$300 elsewhere.
3: The cellular infastructure in the US was built 5+ years before it existed elsewhere. It was decided (at the time) that cellphones would get normal numbers (remember, landlines are ubiquidous in the US and there was no available number block for cellphones). If it looks like a regular number, it should be billed like a regular number and any excess charges should be paid by the cellphone user. Thus, recepient pays was the only logical choice. On the flipside, calling a cellphone in the US costs no more than calling a landline (local = free, long distance = a few cents a minute).
By the way, there *are* CPP providers and plans in the US. Nextel sells such a plan, as do some other providers. One day every plan may have CPP, just as roaming and long distance charges have disappeared from plans.
4: Numbers are geographically fixed, but you don't have to change when you move. Most companies are happy to give you a non-local number.
Cellular technology isn't playing catch-up in the US. We have GPRS and MMS and all of the features you have in Europe. SMS works fine, even between providers. My GSM phone works on nearly every GSM network in the country, and I never pay extra wherever I go in this country of 300 million. I get unlimited GPRS data (not billed by thr kilobyte), unlimited night/weekend minutes, unlimited SMS, unlimited calling to and from phones on the same provider, no long distance anywhere in the country, and 200 minutes anytime else. I pay $40 per month, and I think I get what I pay for.
Believe it or not, the US has more GSM towers deployed than Western Europe, and more CDMA towers than any other country. We also have more diversity than you might believe. One company offers a plan that only works in your home area (usually your city and suburbs, you can pay a buck or two to get your whole state) but gives you unlimited anytime minutes for $32 a month. AT&T has a plan that gives you unlimited anytime, anywhere minutes for $80 a month. Some providers have unlimited SMS or unlimited data. Some have unlimited off-peak minutes. Some have CPP. Some have unlimited minutes to others on the same network. Some have shared minute plans.
So, it's hard to sum up the US wireless market. GSM is the standard, but so is CDMA. CPP exists, but not always.
So, in conclusion, the US wireless market is different from anywhere else. Perhaps it is because of the prevelence of landlines, which are affordable and unlimited. Perhaps it is cultural. Perhaps it has to do wit the fact that we had cellphones 5 years before everyone else.
So we have to put up with some annoying things. But we also get some nice perks.
The US wireless market has been playing catch-up for seven years. Today, they have caught up. 8 years ago, there was no digital cellular service in the US. Now, GSM and CDMA are the standards. SMS is the sandard. And MMS and GPRS and 3G data services are the standards. The GSM providers are uniting against the CDMA providers. And with free phones and number portability, I wouldn't be surprised if CPP becomes the standard. Or if unlimited anytime minutes become the standard. Capitalism works best when there is fierce competition. That's why AMD and Intel produce faster CPUs for lower prices every year.
But now, I (maybe) see what they've been doing.
Does that sound about right?