What Has Number Portability Done For You?

Coldeagle writes "Number portability has been around for a few days now, I was wondering; have any of you fellow Slashdot readers switched carriers? How was your experience, and have you seen any price warring since it went into place?" Or is number portability so far more hype than happenin'?

Comments

The law vs. reality

[Strange Ranger]

The law says that phone companies have to allow for number portability. The law does NOT say the phone companies have to make it easy for the consumer.

For instance, when switching from AT&T to Verizon (while keeping your number the same) in my area you are forced to carry both your old phone and your new phone until May 2004. You place calls on your new phone but you still receive them on your old phone.

Call me crazy but I'll wait a good year or so until it's at least a bit more customer friendly.

The only thing keeping them from making it worse is that no one wants to get the worst press. So it appears they're going to drag their feet and make things as difficult as possible for as long as possible, and they're going to do it just up to the point that they can't get slammed any worse than anyone else in the industry. Like some inverse version of competition.

Q-"How poorly can we comply?"
A-"What are our competitors getting away with?"

Re:I did...

[milkman_matt]

The whole thing is a scam. Unless companies allow you to go month by month, you can't switch b/c their service is bad. Seriously, how many people had the opportunity to switch, but would not b/c they would lose their number.

Why exactly do you say that this is a scam? It doesn't seem like one to me, i'm not going to get screwed when I leave my current carrier that i've been with for 6 years for someone else. The only thing that's going to happen to me, is i'll probably get better service... I wish more scams had effects like that.

I'm the guy you're talking about, though, I've had millions of 'opportunities' (more like urges) to switch carriers due to insufficient coverage and piss poor customer support. Sometimes it's good, but often enough it sucks, so I want to switch to someone new. Why did I put up with it you ask? Because 4 years into my service when I started shopping around, I had already given my number to several people and I didn't want to have to either A) Call several people and update my number with them, or B) Say fuck 'em, i'm switching. Now that number portability is available, I'm jumping ship after the hollidays (and after my bankroll recoups from the holidays).

Just as a sidenote... does anyone have any suggestions as far as carriers that you've noticed that have above average coverage? Or customer support? My girlfriend has T-Mobile, and while the coverage isn't always top notch, she will never run out of good things to say about their customer support.. I myself have Verizon at the top of my list as far as potential carriers to switch over to, they seem to have some of the best coverage maps i've seen, and their customer service at their stores seems outstanding... Any opinions?

-matt

Re:I work for a call phone company

[Natalie's Hot Grits]

"This law is going to shake up the industry. You may even see one or two wireless carriers going under as a result. They've been predicting for years that the 5 major carriers would eventually boil down to 3. This may be the catalyst to make that happen."

Until consumer rights laws which:
- Disallow SIM Locking on cellphones
- Disallow lengthly contracts
- Disallow Price fixing on handsets
- Disallow Price fixing on roaming

are passed, the cellular providers will all win. The above bulleted items are only allowed in north america, and only because of hard lobbying by the providers.

In any other continent, you go to a cell phone store and buy phones OUTRIGHT, no plans to go with it, no contracts, you simply BUY the phone (at usually half of US MSRP price), then you call up a carrier of your choice start service. They give you a SIM and you stick it in your phone, boom, instantly it works. if you don't like their service after a few months, switch providers. Swap your your SIM card with a prepaid card from another provider, go to another country? Buy a prepaid SIM from that country and pay 5-10c/minute insted of 2$/minute.

Around here, cellular providers lock the handsets to their SIM card so you cannot take a handset from one provider to another, even if they use the same exact handset. Don't be fooled by some salesperson's claims that "the radio is 'optimally tuned' to our frequency" because that is just a load of BS. if you are using a GSM phone in the United States, consumer rights laws basically say you will get assraped by your provider. If you go overseas with a GSM Phone purchased within the United States, you can be sure that it will be useless because of the SIM card lock in place on the phone. You will be required to pay $2+/minute roaming charges for usage on your US Provider's sim card.

Number portability isn't gonna do anything except give cellular providers more revenue (they add 2$ to everyone's bill, on top of all other fees and taxes already being charged) and more customers. People won't be switching cellular providers fast, they will simply stay loyal to the providers that have been assraping them for their entire cellular lives.

This whole number portability has been a joke, whoever wrote the law must be in the pockets of the big 5. Free revenue, with negligable costs added in database management. there is NO network upgrade requirement. They don't have to go to each tower and hang new transmitters. they simply add a few tables to a fucking database sitting in their corporate bunker. and it costs them $2/month to do that per customer? perpetually? until the end of time? Just wait until they pass laws which disallow SIM locking, is that gonna cost us another $2/month regulatory hidden fee?

note: this is a rant, but facts presented are true.