Carriers Might Profit From Cell Number Portability

Makarand writes "Carriers that are adding cell-number portability fees to your monthly cell phone bills (while fighting against actually implementing the requirement) may actually rake in profits from these levies as the total amounts collected will be more than the projected costs of meeting the FCC's number portability requirements. Although federal law requires that such fees be 'just and reasonable', it does not require reporting of their actual expenses. Consumer advocates feel that the number portability verification processes required are similar to those used by long-distance phone companies when a customer switches from one service provider to another and there is little reason to believe that expenses to meet portability requirements should vary widely among carriers and be so excessive as to bring profits for the carriers."

Comments

Side effects

[Advocadus Diaboli]

I live in Germany where we have that feature for some while. One problem now is that I call a number that "belongs" to the same provider that I'm using, so I think that I do a call inside the providers net (which usually is cheap), but in fact the one that I call has switched to another provider and my call costs much more than I expect. :-(

Number portability my ass...

[silentbozo]

Verizon has been collecting "number portability fund" fees on my land-line for years. Can I migrate my number to another carrier? Hell no! Can I get my fees waived/refunded? Sorry, but those funds go into a common pool to provide number portability. But I can't move MY number! Sorry, but your number is in an area where number portability is not offered...

The only way to win this game is not to play - I canceled my second line earlier this year. Take that Verizon!

portability in oz

[narkotix]

In australia there was a big thing about the largest carrier preventing number porting. Our consumer watchdog (ACCC) got onto the case and made things start to happen which was good for us consumers!
Here is a report detailing what the ACCC requested from the ACA (australian communications authority) to look into number porting for australian carriers.

Netherlands

[Captain_Chaos]

Here in the Netherlands cell phone providers have been forced to let customers keep their existing phone numbers from competitors for a few years now. They don't charge extra for it (I don't think they're allowed, the mobile phone business is very strictly regulated over here), but they do have a tendency to take much longer to port your number than they should. I think it works moderately well, prices aren't exactly low but I think they'd be signigicantly higher without mandatory number portability.

Verizon

[heli0]

"Verizon says it has not yet decided whether to levy a number portability fee."

http://news.com.com/2117-1039-1020501.html
Verizon Wireless Chief Executive Denny Strigl said Tuesday that unlike rivals, Verizon won't collect monthly or one-time fees from subscribers who want to keep their original telephone number after switching carriers.

Has Verizon wavered in their stance in the past two months, or are they just trying to leave themselves some wriggle room?

Re:How soon will we run out of phone numbers again

[Asmodai]

In the Netherlands we already have had that system in place for years.

Our normal land lines have prefixes for the major cities, such as:

Rotterdam - 010
Amsterdam - 020
Utrecht - 030

GSM, buzzers/pagers, and such were using 06 prefixes. Sexlines and info numbers with costs per minute/conversation are 0900 (used to be 06 as well), and free informational phonenumbers (toll-free) are 0800.

Number portability for mobile phone numbers has been regulated in the Netherlands for a while now due to OPTA. If a provider has its services down for a certain percentage in a month the OPTA will fine the appropriate provider.