Hong Kong's Lessons on Number Portability

Dr.Hair writes "Dan Gillmor once again hits the nail on the head with his comparison of Hong Kong's competitive mobile phone market to the United States. Experiences of incumbent carriers trying to thwart competition and stifle the free market in Hong Kong should be remembered as the FCC nudges US carriers to carry out number portability. In the end competition should provide better customer service, better coverage, and better pricing in the US, all of which will eat in to carrier profits. But it also might bring the US out of the tech backwaters, where customer lock-in is the marketing strategy and "innovation" is the spin of the day."

Comments

My experience from Sweden

[Anonymous Coward]

We have had number portability for some time here in Sweden too. I've also changed cell phone providers a couple of times but at least to me it hasn't been the great competitive thing I hoped it to be. The phone companies just have differentiated more heavily their prices, much like insurance companies. So one is cheaper to connect a call with, another is cheaper to SMS with, yet another is cheaper for something else. To really compare prices you need to know exactly what services you use a month, exactly what time you use them AND to which numbers. This is a very hard job with an individual result, so in the end not many people compare prices at all.

Not the only problem

[mauriceh]

At some point I hope they legislate to prevent the mobile carriers from crippling the phones they sell.
When GSM first got going in N.America I bought a Motorola triband GSM phone ( 900,1800,1900 frequencies) from a Circuit City in Minnesota.
It was sold with a VoiceStream activation package.
Of course, when I took it home to Canada I found it was "SIMM locked" to only work with VoiceStream!
After some longish and not amusing phone conversations with VoiceStream I managed to get it unlocked by reminding them that they do not have service here in Canada.
Then I took it with me this summer to Malaysia and Singapore. That is when I found it was also crippled. The only frequency it would work on was the N.American 1900 band.
When I got back I contacted VoiceStream and Motorola to ask what it would take to restore the phone to allow it so work with the frequencies it was advertised as being capable of.
The response was that as VoiceStream ordered these with only 1900 capability the rest was "turned off" in the ROM version shipped to VoiceStream.
"Can they "repair" it?"
"No."
I will pay ( even though I should not have to)
"No"
Can I return it?
"No"

Total rip-off..

Re:Not the only problem

[Nogami_Saeko]

I had a fun one with Nokia:

I had purchased an unlocked 8290 (brand new) over the net. Great little phone, I really liked it, but the problem was that some brain-surgeon at Nokia had decided that to "assist" operators, the phone would auto-lock itself to the first SIM that was inserted into it.

Never mind that when you buy the phone it was unlocked and would accept any carrier's SIM, but afterwards it locked and you were stuck.

Needless to say, I was mad. Phoned Nokia, who said "We can't generate an unlock code for the phone, call your provider". Called the provider "We don't carry that model, so we can't generate a code.". Argh. Of course it was especially annoying that obviously Nokia COULD help me, but they chose not to. Soured me on Nokia phones something fierce.

In the end, buying a $10 cable and using a free utility off the 'net unlocked the phone in about 2 seconds. Still, it was a problem that never should've happened.

That said, I'm on a Sony Ericsson P800 now and I love it - triband, totally unlocked, all of the goodies. I'm skipping the P900 for now (as it's just an incremental upgrade), but will probably pick up the next phone/PDA offering from SE (hopefully some-time in the summer/fall of next year).

Re:Not universal everywhere

[squiggleslash]

Yes, it's legal. The phone companies try to stop it, but the actual process is not, by itself, illegal. Indeed, OFTEL have in the past tried to prevent the phone companies from SP locking phones, and IIRC forced all four (though at the time only Orange and One2one (now T-Mobile) actually did) to have unlocking policies (eg have a contract for a year and then pay a small fee and the carrier will unlock the phone they sold you.)

In Britain, all four providers use GSM. In the US there's at least four widely used standards, iDEN, GSM, IS-95 (often also known as "CDMA"), and IS-136 (or rather a bunch of slightly different standards based upon it, also known as "TDMA" or "D-AMPS") plus AMPS (the original analog service.) Only GSM and iDEN support "personal mobility" - the ability to keep your subscriber details seperate from the physical hardware you use to connect, and as there's only one iDEN operator, it's somewhat irrelevent for the latter.

Thankfully GSM is finally taking off in the US, but with IS-95 and its successors being the dominant standard for now, US subscribers will have to wait for Qualcomm to pull their finger out and support personal mobility as well before having the same portability of hardware that's standard in Europe. Unfortunately, while Qualcomm has done this for a couple of markets (notably in China), they've stalled on the issue with the US, even claiming it would be illegal to do so (because they've standardised in ESN numbers to identify subscribers, and an FCC rule bars moving an ESN from phone phone to another.) The fundamental reason is actually that the carriers do not want this.

Re:Not universal everywhere

[Lord of the Wazz]

In England you have to have your phone "unlocked" to use it on another network. The process isn't legal, but small shops will do it for about 10 quid.

This is entirely dependent on the network you use. Orange lock all of their phones, whereas Vodaphone generally don't (although a few of their recent Live! offerings have been locked). The process of unlocking the phone is completely legal in a lot of cases. I used to have a Siemens SL42e on Orange. You could unlock it by sending it to an official Siemens support centre. I also had a friend who was going travelling for a few months and wanted to be able to use foreign Pay As You Go SIM cards in his Siemens S55. He phoned up Orange and they unlocked it over the air for him. I know for a fact that Vodaphone's locked version of the Sony Ericsson T610 can be unlocked by applying an official SE firmware to it.

Danish experiences

[infolib]

In Denmark we've had number portability for several years. My current cell number has been through 3 different providers. IMO it's been a huge benefit to competition. For instance, I recently switched provider during a price battle that cut my phone bill in half. (My old one followed through most of the way, but they'd never have done it without number portability) They are obliged to extend number portability to work between cell and fixed line phones this april which I'm not so sure is a good idea - I like to know where I' calling because of pricing.

Best current rates in Denmark are about 10c/min, SMS's are 3-4c apiece with no subscription. Some expect the price to fall even lower within the next year. The government agency on IT and Communication runs a helpful price guide to internet and phone providers. Of course all the providers interoperate, so you can just switch sim cards to switch provider and you can call and SMS anyone.

Several providers offer subsidized phones that can be very cheap, but they're not allowed to simlock it to their network for longer than 6 months. It's not illegal to have the simlock prematurely unlocked and it is offered publicly for 15-20 Euro. (You might get better rates elsewhere). Your contract will however be enforceable, so you'll pay subscription fees. I used this possibility recently to use my phone with a german provider during my stay there. (It's illegal in Germany though - I sent my phone from Germany to Denmark to have it unlocked - go call the police)

Message from Hong Kong

[Anonymous Coward]

Remarkable I have not seen any comments from Hong Kong. I happen to live there for 1 1/2 years now, and of course I have my mobile phone.
So far I have once switched providers - an easy and painless issue. It cost me like $20 admin cost (1USD=7.8HKD, so that is abt USD2.5), and three days later it was ported over.
On calling cost: that is indeed truly low. I pay $89 (abt USD12) a month for 500 mins airtime (calling and being called), including call forwarding (press when being called on the mobile, and answer on the land line: no airtime paybable!), voicemail, SMS services, etc.
Calling landline to landline is free. Calling landline to mobile is free (mobile pays airtime only).
Calling cost are so low, many providers do not send you a paper invoice (costs $10 (just over USD1) service cost), only SMS and e-mail invoice.

Don't forget Hong Kongs 7mln people live on an area only 30x50 km in size, of which a large part is water. The high buildings are the largest problem for the networks: reflections. Buidling a country wide network is therefor easy and cheap. Networks are good and reliable, also high in the mountain (up to 990m high it goes here!) you have network.

Oh and for price comparison: though life is expensive, and Hong Kong has a name of being an expensive place to live, that is only housing. Everything else is cheap here.

Wouter.