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Hong Kong's Lessons on Number Portability

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the learning-from-history dept.

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."

12 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Similar in the UK by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All mobile numbers are obliged to start 07, for the sake of portability and also to let people know they're calling a mobile phone (so it'll be more expensive).

    Having said that, I changed my number last time - because the new one was much easier to remember :-)

    Simon.

    --
    Physicists get Hadrons!
    1. Re:Similar in the UK by weave · · Score: 3, Interesting
      The difference in the U.S. is number portability extends to landline phones too. So I can move my home phone number to my mobile phone and disconnect forever my landline. This is why the RBOCs (landline providers) are fighting this so hard.

      The only reason the US can get away with this is because the owner of the phone pays for both incoming and outgoing calls. It doesn't cost the caller anything extra to call a mobile phone.

  2. Its gonna be a race for the bottom ... by cdrguru · · Score: 2, Interesting

    What you are going to see is the mobile companies chasing after customers with lower prices. The WalMart of pricing - with the service to match. Since nobody talks about phone SERVICE, the only thing to compete on will be price.

    This means we will see lower prices, worse service, worse coverage for rural areas and the big markets will be saturated with low-cost plans.

    We might see some hardware consolidation - because only the really big players are going to be able to afford to stay in the game.

    1. Re:Its gonna be a race for the bottom ... by RzUpAnmsCwrds · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Around here (Colorado), even GSM service works *everywhere*. Indoors, around town, driving 60 miles through nowhere to get to the airport (Denver International Airport is built in the middle of nowhere).

      Where the providers differentiate themselves is in rural coverage. Verizon wireless gave my friend *nearly 100%* coverage in Wyoming. We're talking CDMA coverage that's 100 miles away from the nearest town of more than 100. With Verizon, coverage is simply a non-issue: I would say that it's quite nearly 100%.

      So, if you drive around cities of more than 5000 and stay on the interstate highways / other major roads, any provider is really fine. If you want to drive through nowhere and still get coverage, you might want to look at Verizon.

    2. Re:Its gonna be a race for the bottom ... by cdrguru · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Verizon started there "can you here me" campaign to fend off the bad PR that happened when they got sued by a woman's family after she died. She was in a single-vehicle accident and her Verizon cell phone was in a no-coverage area.

      As far as I know, Verizon hasn't changed anything, just their advertising. All of their maps now say that a solid color indicating coverage is not an indication of actual coverage in any specific area.

      In Chicago people can't seem to agree who has the worst service. If Cingular is going GSM (rather than the TDMA they have been with), that might be good news for them. But almost universally in Chicago there are significant holes and places where you can get a channel from 2:00 AM to about 4:30 AM and that is it.

      I don't see anything other than hype about service and nothing to back it up. When you call any of the companies they know nothing about their service and are often less than forthcoming about rate plans that aren't the special of the week.

    3. Re:Its gonna be a race for the bottom ... by kaszeta · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I don't know where you're living, but that's been the top issue everywhere I've lived in the US. Price is always secondary to coverage (does it work indoors, does it work in the next state, etc).

      Indeed... where I live (rural NH) this is a serious issue, since the real-life coverage (as opposed to thier coverage maps) is a spotty patchwork quilt of carriers. For example, nobody has coverage at all in my town (we have a tower, but they've been dickering with the landower over leases for years), Sprint and Verizon cover the SE part of the state well, US Cellular covers much of the rural parts of the state, and various other providers make random cameos as you drive around. But whether a service works at all for you usually involves getting the phone (or borrowing a freinds with that service) and testing it out for a few days.

      Many of the people I know are, like myself, well-paid professionals for whom a reliable cell phone connection (or for that matter, a decent broadband connection) is worth paying a hefty premium.

      Hopefully some increased competition will mean more competition for coverage, as well as price...

  3. Re:Every Company Seeks a monopoly by blmatthews · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Originally bonsai *were* naturally occuring phenomena, it's only after all the stunted trees growing on rocks in the mountains were found and removed that people started shaping their own bonsai.

    I agree with your main points though.

  4. Germany's Lessons on Number Portability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here in Germany we have number portability (only mobile phones) since exactly one year and
    nobody cares.
    Only a small percentage of the swappers
    take their number with them.
    This is partly blamed to the high costs :
    around 25 Euros.

    1. Re:Germany's Lessons on Number Portability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You mean, in Germany the only people who pay for number portability are the people who take advantage of number portability?

      I like that better than the USian way, where the greedy phone companies charge EVERYONE a [$feature] fee of a few dollars EVERY MONTH because one day we MIGHT want to take advantage of [$feature].

      Just a few weeks ago the FCC floated the idea of landline number portability, where people will be able to get their old landline number to ring on their mobile phone. The U.S. telcos are going to fight it tooth and nail, but you can bet the farm that within a few months we'll start seeing "Landline number portability fee....$4.50" on our monthly phone bills.

      And if the telcos do somehow manage to fight off having to change, I bet we won't get refunds, either.

  5. Number portability can be bad thing by anno1602 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Here in Germany, we traditionally have different "area codes" assigned to the different providers. That is, by looking at the area code, you know which provider the mobile is on. This was a good thing, since the cost of calling a mobile depends on the provider (e.g. I refuse to call an O2 mobile before 8 p.m., it's too expensive). With the advent of number portability, this association could get lost. It hasn't yet, since nobody uses it, but the possibility is there. How will I know how expensive my call is going to be?

    1. Re:Number portability can be bad thing by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Here in Finland we've had cellphone number portability since this July, and people face the same problem. As a solution there is a toll-free number where you can check the provider of a particular number. However, many providers now have schemes where the price of phonecalls is independent of the target provider (as long as it's a cellphone).

      I for one welcome our new number portability overlords ;-). I'm currently in the process of changing my provider, but I wouldn't do this if I had to change the number I've had for nearly seven years now.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  6. just wait for true number portability.... by mwooldri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Apparently there will come a time in the US where you can switch your landline phone number to a cellular phone and vice versa.

    They're not there yet. I was able to retain my landline phone number when switching providers (BellSouth to Birch). However just moving down the road required a totally new phone number - with the same phone company. Makes no sense to me, because the cell phone companies and now the VoIP phone companies can give you a number in any area when you set up or move service. Especially intriguing is the offer from iconnecthere.com to give subscribers a choice of international numbers (presently UK and Israel) that a person in the USA could have on their VoIP phone. It means that theoretically my UK family could call me for pennies at the weekend!

    However, this doesn't mean people will suddenly get multiple phone numbers so that Auntie Flo can call them on the cheap. Rather, it is nationwide calling plans on landlines which will capture that market - services like former Worldcoms' Neighborhood - $50/mo and unmetered across whole USA. Speaking on nationwide calling plans it's about time European telecom operators got together to offer "unmetered" calls across Europe for a single monthly service fee. Oh, and to have a Euro plan where standard minutes are used rather than the expensive ones presently charged.

    Mark.