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Cellphone Number Portability -- A Big Lie?
juuri asks: "Having spoken to a few friends it seems like troubles with cell phone portability here in the States is rampant. However today I ran into a new problem, it seems numbers aren't really portable if you move. For example if one has an LA number and moves to a different region (which vary greatly from carrier to carrier) you can not move your number with you if you switch to a new carrier such as Cingular or T-Mobile. Why not? You obviously already have the number and with nationwide roaming plans there is no reason for such distinctions. Even more alarming is that your new regional arm of your carrier may give you much trouble over your previous contract and basically refuse to give you service unless you sign up for a new, local region one. Does anyone know of a cell provider that lets you move your number, regardless of region?" It seems that the latest new thing for cellphones has turned into more of a flop, than a feature. Has anyone else run into this problem? Were you able to keep your number, or were you forced to change it?
When I moved from San Francisco to LA (then back again a year later) I never changed my billing. I already had free roaming and no long distance charges, so I just kept my 415 area code, even though I lived in LA. Aside from the slight annoyance of having to explain that I really lived in LA, it was no problem, ATT just sent my bill to my LA address.
If you are one in a million, then there are six thousand people who are just like you.
Would anyone choose to switch to T-Mobile or Cingular?
I would recommend switching to an avian messaging system or tin cans over either carrier.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Porting OUTSIDE OF YOUR AREA is not always possible.
The numbers are still linked, geographically, to a specific place.
The carrier where you are going to at the very least, needs to have a presence geographically within the same market that your phone number came out of. I'm not sure how it works internally, but I'd be willing to lay odds that at least some carriers are unable to take a number from one area, and transfer it to another -- like they won't activate a phone for a customer that lives outside their presence area - they can't take a phone number from outside their presence area.
In THEORY, however, as long as both carriers have a presence in the same geographic telephone LEC, then they should be able to port.. they may have to set it up under your old address, then change the billing address.. but it could be done. If they don't have presence in the old location though, it ain't gonna happen.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
The link goes to the story that has the link to the story.. to the story.. with the link.. OH GOD MY MIND!
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
I just got my new phone from T-Mobile (via Amazon) today and called around 1:00pm to get the number portability in. The total call lasted 11 minutes, including a phonetree misstep and a service addition. They said that it would take up to 14 business days for the transfer to happen, during which I couldn't use my old number. As luck would have it, my number transferred 6 hours later and I'm up and running!
It wasn't instantanious, but I couldn't imagine things going more smoothly.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
oh, a link to slashdot!
oh, a link to slashdot!
oh, a link to slashdot!
oh, a link to slashdot!
I hope I didn't brain my damage.
The first wave was the top 100 MSA's (Metro Service Area), so if you are moving from, say, Louisville KY to one of the outlying RSA's (Rural Service Area) or even another MSA in KY, you would be in a different area code and the number portability would be rejected.
As for the posters argument that there should be no problem since you are going from one provider's nationwide plan to another, there is no such thing as "Free long distance" or "Free Roaming", someone has to pay for the towers, radios, switches, and the fiber connecting them. Your provider is constantly analyzing if they can turn a profit on the average user, with average usage per month, at whatever price point we're talking about. The trucker on a $100/month nationwide plan that uses $110 of service will be ballanced out by that persone who buys a 400 minute anytime plan for 40 a month but never leaves your towers/fiber ring/switches.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
All of the number portability things had a disclaimer that it needed to be in the same local market. As someone suggested, just change your billing address if you are happy with your service, if you don't have roaming or long distance charges it should cost you just the same.
I use Nextel, and when I needed a local number in another state, it was no problem to add a second line to my existing service with that number. The model phone I had at the time actually allowed me to have one number show up as "Line 1" and the other show up as "Line 2" - I know with Cingular, at least in NC, the limit is one number per phone.
I've since dropped the second number (you do have to sign a year contract, which is annoying), but I also know Sprint will activate a number for you anywhere from anywhere in the nation.
Also, a lot of the VoIP services will let you choose where your local number is provisioned. I know of a few folks who buy family overseas a "local" number, then send the the VoIP equipment to them. They hook it to the Internet, then call a local number to reach family in Europe or Mexico. Actually, it's pretty slick.
I think eventually, long distance service as we know it will be a thing of the past. My company pays something along the lines of 2.5 cents a minute for intra- and inter-LATA long distance (we actually run a "cooperative" that pools several companies and negotiates lower rates with the LD providers out there - if you're interested, send me an IM - we don't make any money, but the more people we sign up, the lower we can push rates down!) Eventually, the phrase "too cheap to meter" might become a reality.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
Event Telstra over here in oz managed to figure it out so it cant be that hard
I'm me. I think.
then maybe it would be more reasonable. However, as most area codes are still linked to specific areas, the extra amount of numbers an area code in a specific region may have to handle due to people wanting to maintain that phone number may cause regions to go through very annoying area code splits, which of course would mean half of the population in that area code would suddenly have to dial extra digits to call someone in that area code.
Would be nice to have an area code just for cells for people who want easy portability to different regions, but that would also cause problems such as people not wanting to call due to long distance charges.
Cell phones still rely on area codes. Hence why you will need a new number when you move. You just switched area codes, and so there's a chance that your old number may be in useinyour new area code.
Secondly. The first link there (added by an editor it seems) points to the slashdot front page. Hope this helps those in charge make this site runa little smoother for the editors.
I did exactly what the poster claims could not be done. Perhaps I got lucky, but here is what I did:
Was using a Sprint phone with Chicago suburbs area code. (And living in another state, I might add.) Moved to NYC. Bought a T-Mobile phone with a NY area code. A bit later, had T-Mobile port my Sprint number over.
Number portability is great! Because of cell phones, area codes are irrelevant, so I figured there was no reason to lose my old number which had served me for so long. (Plus I was getting random calls in Chinese, a language I don't know, meant for the former owner of the NY number.) I know zero, count 'em, zero people for whom area code has any relevance.
And we all still get to pay for it, too.
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
our port was handled overnight (verizon --> t-mobile) but that may be plain old luck. interesting about the region-to-region defect.
here's a permanent fix -- how about a permanent number assigned to you for life, like a SSN. dial it, get your friend. yeah, i don't like that idea either, but it certainly is *portable*.
I've been trying since December 6th 2003 to port my landline number to a verizon phone (bought on December 6th). We were told it would take 3-4 days to port the number. I expected 2 weeks.
So far it's been 3 months and I've made more than 25 phone calls to Verizon - and still the number is not ported. To make matters even better the landline carrier, Frontier Telephone of Rochester disconnected my number today. I immediately called Verizon (yes, Verizon) about this. They tried to get a conference call to Frontier but Frontier was closed for the day.
Can someone please tell me what to do? I filed a complaint with the FCC a week or two ago. I tried contacted a local TV news source but they didn't want to help me (or couldn't). I also left a message with the NYS attorney general tonight. I really don't know who to contact.
I switched to Verizon because I was unhappy with Frontier and it wouldn't cost much more to use Verizon and have 2 phones with many more features than my landline carrier. Instead I'm faced with 3 months of phone calls to Verizon and Frontier and both companies pointing the finger at each other (and me wanting to point the finger at both).
Verizons customer support has been very friendly and seemingly helpful but the fact of the matter is that after 25 calls and 3 months time the number still isn't ported.
When I call Frontier they promptly tell me that I should be dealing with Verizon - not them. Their reps are typically very rude. A while back I was lucky enough to get a nice rep who put me in touch with her supervisor. Her supervisor was nice and contacted their porting department (which I can't contact). He said their porting department wouldn't tell him why, but that Verizon wasn't giving them the information they needed to port the number.
To the best of my knowledge Verizon has sent at least 4 port requests. 3 have been ignored and one was denied.
I almost forgot! We were never offered a temp number for the wireless phone so we can only make outgoing calls on it. This has been a major hassle.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post but I am extremely upset...
Greg
There\'s no place like ~
Did this a few months ago, when they were two separate companies. Attempted to bring my Indy number with me to Chicago. No dice. Said that it was out of the area, even though i wanted to sign up for a local plan - I just wanted to keep my number. For what it's worth, customer service and technical ability was sub par on both sides of the equation. Waiting for the day when we all just have one number (perhaps a IPv6 domain, with subdomains for each of our telephones/computers/gizmos) - that way it's ours till death. Can't wait for the future.
One of my friends has got his parent's cellphone bill for years. Nobody wanted to let them get a number local to all the people they call (as if local means anything to someone with a no long distance cell phone plan with an RV). Their son still lives in that area though, so they use his address and everyone is happy.
If you want a number local to someplace, odds are very good that you know someone there who can collect your bills, and forward them. With everything online lately, you don't really even need physical bills.
Most of the phone contracts I've read indicate that the carrier has the option of switching you to a local number if you remain outside your home service area for a specified period of time (I think i've seen 3 to 6 months). Since I'm not in the market for a time contracted phone, I only read the contract notes I see in the newspaper or in direct mail, so ymmv.
Need a Catering Connection
Perhaps the reason you can't move your number across the country is because (from my understanding) the system was designed to mimic landline LNP (LOCAL number portability). Numbers can generaly only be moved if there is a common rate center (not nessearily an area code). If most of the cell phone providers operate out of a common local central office or location, moving is a snap. IF, however, they are outside of the same local area, the LNP rules do not apply.
This applies to cell phones and landlines. I found this out the hard way when I tried to move our company's 100 DID numbers cross-town. Some companies (SBC, for instance) WILL create a new 'virtual rate center' (fancy name for a foreign exchange prefix for inbound only), but they will charge for it.
The distance exception to LNP has been a hot button for most of the cell companies (Check back issues of the Washington Digest from NECA (http://www.neca.org) (National Exchange Carrier Organization) for more info.
-arg
Toil is Stupid. Don't be Stupid.
Now, my process isn't finished yet, but supposedly it'll be done in the next 24-36 hours.
My problem wasn't that T-Mobile couldn't port my number from Sprint, but that they wouldn't sell me a subsidized phone if they did. I could pay $200 for the "free" Nokia phone, and prices for other phones went up from there. Because of the way their commissions work, they only got commissions on local phone numbers.
So I bought a SIM chip from T-Mobile, ordered a phone from elsewhere, and we'll see what happens when the phone is delivered on Saturday.
I have three phones, all linked on a family plan. We keep two of them here in Massachusetts, and one is with my wife's parents in southern New jersey. But all three have local MA numbers. They were originally with T-Mobile, but I moved them to Cingular in late January. There were no major problems with the port - my phone and my wife's phone went over within a few hours, and the third phone ported a day later. For the day it took, dialing their number from a landline would fail, but dialing it from one of the already ported cells would work fine.
No problems since, either. And the GSM service up here is better with Cingular than it was with T-Mobile.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
If you move you just update your billing address.. if you dont care that your new neighbors will have to dial long distance to speak with you then it's fine.
If you want it to be a local number for where you're moving to then yes you'll have to change your number. The current switching network used worldwide Landline/Wireless will not allow what you're asking to be done. It would be chaos. Until all the SS7 traffic is converted into some sort of IP based system then it might be possible but until then I'd say try verizon wireless. They have a ez move program.
...like they do in Australia ;)
Sure, we have only 19odd million people, but from the outset our mobiles ("cell's") have had separate area codes, originally the area codes indicated carrier, but now we have number portability, we just recognise a mobile number from its 04xx (or +614xx) prefix but cant infer carrier anymore.
just a pointless $0.02
err!
jak
Moved from South Florida to Seattle;
kept my nationwide plan, kept my number, kept my contract.
No Problem.
They let me change my billing address, immediately, keeping my South Florida number until I was ready to change it.
From my understanding of what "Number Portability" was to bring to cell phone users, the ability to keep your number and move to another state was NOT on the list. I understood that number portability was implemented so that someone could move from one cell phone carrier to another and keep the same number.
That's not to say that isn't possible, and I've heard several stories of people who have moved and kept their number. I think that is totally up to the carrier in question and their infrastructure and billing systems. I do not think this was an FCC-mandated feature.
To be honest, I'm surprised the FCC allows it.
You can read more about number portability, success and horror stories, provider discussions, and cell phone capabilities over at Howard Forums. Very good, very high traffic. It's like Slashdot for cell phones. =)
Don Head
UNIX/Linux Administrator
i got a new cell for X-mas, intending to transfer my (verizon) landline number to the (AT&T) cell, after 2 months and NOTHING but empty support promises and a temp number on the phone, i said 'screw this' and now just have the two plus call forwarding, cheapre in the long run actually. This portability thing is a joke.
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
That's tantamount to a charge for porting the number. I'd write the FCC. Worse thing that can happen is nothing.
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
I just moved 2 nnumbers from one carier to another (same geographic location though) took almost 3 weeks for the entire thing to happen - they said they were having system problems. They finally got it working though.
Are you a Candy Addict?
The cell phone could make calls immediately, and began receiving calls within 10 days, but my old line still worked over that period.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
number portability means you can take your number between carriers - not between geographic regions. Putting aside the "but they could!" factors, the simple fact remaining is that you should want a local number to wherever you are living - how else can someone in that area call your cell phone from a land line? Oh, they'll just dial long distance. Thanks ass.
Well, they should've bought a nationwide free long distance unlimited minutes cell phone if they wanted to be my friend!
That aside - the main reason is more likely so they can more accurately guage need for towers and coverage saturation. Actual roaming varies greatly, but there are trends to it - but for a yearly "where should we add towers" judgement, it's much cleaner to say "well, we have X customers here - so we have enough towers for now." than to say "our towers have noted X customers here, and time regression indicates that Y of them tend to stay in that area. After running this algorithm against every geographic location, we're confident that we should never have let numbers slide all around and we want to kill ourselves."
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
VoIP services are indeed the way to do this... you can transfer your cell phone number to your vonage account and then you can set that up to ring your internet phone first and then if that is not answered to forward to another number (your new cell phone #)... The virtual numbers are pretty cool - you can have local number for Chicago, New York, and LA all on your business card, all coming to your secret lab in Montana...
You can, or at least, you could with Sprint (pre-portability).
When I got my first cell phone, it was bought and billed to Indiana; but I requested a Los Angeles number since I would be living there for the summer. They allowed me to do that. When I moved back, I requested an Indianapolis number. After finishing school, I moved back to L.A. and still have my Indy number (but am billed in L.A.).
If the carriers are giving him problems, the obvious and simple solution would be for him to switch carriers NOW (before he moves), keep his old number, and just change billing addressses later.
IANAL, but I play one on
Not all markets offer portability right now. Only a few markets were required to. The rest is happening in May I believe. That may be your problem.
'Same speed C but faster'
I was with Sprint because I had a job at Best Buy and they had a great employee plan there. However after getting fired for "requesting too many days off" (I was part time and gave them my entire summer's schedule, asking for one day a week max off - their definition of part time is working 4 hours a week). In my manager's words, once a week was too much to have off, and she told me "It's not worth my time for you to work here". /schaffer.htmonth plan, and mentioned that I was thinking about changing carriers but was waiting for the bill to go into effect so I could keep my number. Well, minutes after that my account shows up with a year long contract started back in June when I started the account! They retroactively put on a yearlong contract, which I certainly didn't agree to.
Anyway long story short, I no longer had an employee account with Sprint but continued with them until I could find a cheaper plan with someone else. Their cheapest at the time was $45 a month, which is rediculous. At the time I didn't have any yearly plan or anything, and it outright said that on their webpage. I also called customer service to make sure I had a month to month plan with no cancellation fee and sure enough I did. However next time I called customer service I asked again to confirm that I had a month to mhttp://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~wacourse/html/voices
I call and ask what's the deal and the customer service person tells me to just tell them when I cancel my account and they won't fine me, so I go ahead and find the cheapest account possible which is with TMobile. When I get them, I try to get the same number as with Sprint (the law was now in effect) but they tell me they can't, I have to go to Sprint to get the number changed over. Sprint says the same thing about TMobile. I try again, but it ends up that Sprint is supposed to, but refuses unless I go into a Sprint store and present two forms of identification. That's odd, because later on they'll say all I need for identification to get an account with them is my birthdate. Yet, they refuse repetedly.
Anyway, now I'm stuck with two accounts, so I try to cancel my Sprint account. This was soon after the bill to keep your number went into effect, and I had to wait for 3 hours on hold at 1AM at night just to get a customer service rep at Sprint. I can only hope it's because they were flooded by people leaving them. I speak to one customer service rep who at first doesn't believe me but after a long time talks to his manager and approves that I shouldn't have the contract and shouldn't be charged for cancelling. He forwards me to the cancellation department... who promptly refuses to cancel the $150 fee. They say they can't find who I was just talking to, to confirm that I had permission to cancel the fee, and when I talk to the manager he insults me. He also informs me that according to record I've not once talked to customer service before, even though I've had a good 3 or 4 phone calls with them. I say I never agreed to yearlong service and never signed any contract. He responds with that by giving them my birthdate when I signed up I was agreeing to a legal contract. More haggling back and forth, with him getting ruder as the night wore on, but end result me telling him to immediately cancel my account several times because I want nothing to do with Sprint.
I check my phone a couple of days later and it's still on. They just won't do a thing they say. I call them up again and just agree to the $150 charge from the beginning and the first guy is able to cancel the phone. He asks if I want it til the end of the month, since I'm paying for the entire month, and I agree since no one had my new number yet. I make sure I'm getting it until the end of the month, but lo and behold as soon as the conversation was over the phone was cancelled.
I got my sprint bill for $150 + December, and tried to pay online (as the customer service guy told me I'd be able to). However, again they were wrong, my login was gon
As many of you know cellphones, and other wireless handheld hardware emits RF radiation at low levels. Since I am considering using a cellphone as my primary phone line (as in not paying for a land line), I realised that the use of cellphones in this manner is quite new (within the last 10 years lets say). I can't help but wonder if this will pose a health risk in the long term.
A recent study just published by Popular Science magazine found a "link between microwave radiation emitted by GSM mobile phones (the most common type worldwide) and brain damage in rats". Even "hands free" sets that you can buy for cellphones are believed to worsen the levels of cell phone radiation in the brain. Even the FDA website says that "There is no proof that wireless phones are absolutely safe". Most people ignore these risks because nobody is dying from cell phone use today, but could this cause a health disaster in the future? I am sure many slashdotters are quite attached to their cellphones, what do you think about this risk?
It was meant to allow you to switch carriers in the same area that you are currently in. It wasn't meant to let you just do whatever you wanted with "your" phone number.
Personally I had no problems with using it to switch from Verizon to T-Mobile the day after Thanksgiving last year. Little less then 24 hours after I walked out of the T-Mobile store my new phone was active with my old number. Much better service for about the same price.
-- Slashdot, making the Left look conservative since 1997.
The FCC, In it's original mandates to wireline LECs to implement LNP (Local Number Portability) limits portability to a wireline rate center. That is, the area you can call locally on your phone without toll charges or extended area agreements (referred to in the industry as EAS). The reason for this is extreme difficulty in automated billing systems and the technological limitations with "querying" every single call to every ported number in the United States. Respecting these logical and proven limitations, the FCC has retained the same limitation (portable withing the rate center, only) in their mandate on wireless number portability. In other words-- It has never been expected, nor demanded by the FCC or the industry to try to make numbers portable across large geographic regions. There is no "theory" on this matter. LNP has been tested and implemented throughout the United States. It's been working since 1997, when the original mandate came out to wireline LEC (LEC, by the way, stands for Line Exchange Carrier or "service provider"). Wireless rate centers are much larger than wirline rate centers and can overlap several wireline rate centers, but they can only port numbers to the limitation of their presence in the rate center of the carrier they are porting from. So, the wireless carrier cannot port a number to anywhere in their rate center-- They can only port a number to anywhere in the DONOR's rate center. This is how it is supposed to work, and this is how it DOES work. The technology required by service providers nationwide to port numbers over large geographic regions (often referred to in the industry as "geographic portability") is not yet available, and what is available is far too expensive to justify the charges to customers like yourself to recover the cost. Keep tabs on the FCC to find out when it WILL be available.
The FCC, In it's original mandates to wireline LECs to implement LNP (Local Number Portability) limits portability to a wireline rate center. That is, the area you can call locally on your phone without toll charges or extended area agreements (referred to in the industry as EAS). The reason for this is extreme difficulty in automated billing systems and the technological limitations with "querying" every single call to every ported number in the United States. Respecting these logical and proven limitations, the FCC has retained the same limitation (portable withing the rate center, only) in their mandate on wireless number portability. In other words-- It has never been expected, nor demanded by the FCC or the industry to try to make numbers portable across large geographic regions. There is no "theory" on this matter. LNP has been tested and implemented throughout the United States. It's been working since 1997, when the original mandate came out to wireline LEC (LEC, by the way, stands for Line Exchange Carrier or "service provider"). Wireless rate centers are much larger than wirline rate centers and can overlap several wireline rate centers, but they can only port numbers to the limitation of their presence in the rate center of the carrier they are porting from. So, the wireless carrier cannot port a number to anywhere in their rate center-- They can only port a number to anywhere in the DONOR's rate center. This is how it is supposed to work, and this is how it DOES work. The technology required by service providers nationwide to port numbers over large geographic regions (often referred to in the industry as "geographic portability") is not yet available, and what is available is far too expensive to justify the charges to customers like yourself to recover the cost. Keep tabs on the FCC to find out when it WILL be available.
From what I understand, the number mapping between switching centers determines the "portability" of your number. Your cell phone actually has two numbers. The first number is the "alias" number that people call. The second number is the "real" number assigned to your phone by your service provider. Both numbers have to be within a certain call center radius in order for the mapping to work. When you port a number, the system is essentially mapping your alias number to a different mapped number.
Shorthand response
Longer response.
7 digits is the right number to remember. I see no compelling reason not
to limit to the best extent we can, the length of phone numbers.
Within a carrier network maybe. From anywhere else, this is not so. The advent
of number portability makes this more of an issue. Calls originating from
another carriers network are not routed ASN style, but regionally, AKA
area codes. While the extra routing penalty imposed may not have enough time
delay to be noticeable (I have no info on this) it certainly introduces a
lot of chaos. Given 7+-2 I believe the cost signifigantly outweighs the
benefit.
Another way of looking at this, IP routing is geographically and class based.
Aha. That does sound like the right answer to why the 1+ dialing is there in the first place.
But in New York (or on my VOIP phone), where 11-digit is mandatory and 7-digit dialing doesn't work, you can't dial seven digits. So if you dialed 413-5112, that would logically have to be interpreted area code 413, exchange 511, and it should wait for the rest of the number.
But it doesn't do that. It just sits there and gives you a fast busy signal. I guess they don't want it to be inconsistent with the way the rest of the country does it, otherwise New Yorkers would be visiting California (where 7-digits is valid for local numbers) and ring random people trying to dial 213-555-6789.
Why is this guy a troll? In Jersey, the only thing that is remotely consistant is verizon. Cingular, T-Mobil, and the others have horrible service in the most densely populated state. Sure verizon doesn't have rollover and it's expensive, but hey, you get what you pay for.
... should I use in windows" and he answered with: "windows?? use linux you retard!" he would have been modded +5 Insightful.
If the question asked was: "which program for doing
Let's see if I can get -1 flamebait for this one!
But does anyone know if you can port a number from a Tracfone to another cell ( either a contract based or another Tracfone)
That's pretty much the same system we have in germany, too. There are designated prefixes for cell phones, grouped by carriers. Now you can take your number with you when switching providers.
But this is really not as cool as you might think because there are different rates when calling numbers of different cell providers. And calling a number of carrier A can be twice as expensive as calling a number of carrier B.
And now with the prefix-carrier relation gone, there is no way for to find out how much the call actually will be. I think there is a service number that i can call and ask but that's really not very userfriendly.
...are defined in the US: service provider number portability and geographic number portability. The former has been around for some time for wireline subscribers and is what was enabled recently for cellphone subscribers and allows you to change service providers but does not allow you to move to NY and still use a San Fran NPANXX. The latter does not assume change of service providers and does allow one to keep a localized NPANXX -- this is as very complicated using today's legacy switching technologies and is (as yet!) unavailable to wireline and wireless subscribers.
So there will never be proof that RF doesn't cause cancer. Ever. Just like you can't prove Santa Claus doesn't exist.
However, there's no way for your tissues to tell the difference between a UHF TV transmitter 5 miles away or a low power cellphone held up to your head.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Number portability is working fine for a couple of years already in Holland, and in the beginning we had the same problem you had.
:(
Most providers no longer differentiate between carriers though, it costs the same wether you call to carrier A or B. I suppose that's bcause you can't tell the difference yourself.
I'm waiting 'till the big telco's (T-mobile e.g.) merge their network across countries. Within Holland I call for 8 cents per minute, but if I go to Germany it costs my 95 cents all of a sudden, eventhough the distance can be shorter and I still use T-mobile's network!
I just like the way all the wireless carriers are advertising this change as though they thought it up rather than having been forced to do it by law.
well, perhaps that's a typically /. exaggeration, but I'm quite happy with them.
In Chicagoland, I haven't seen anyone with any carrier get better reception than I have - and some were worse - although the reception with my Nokias has been decidedly better than some other people I know with Tmobile.
Their prices definitely beat anyone else when I signed up.
I got good reception in FL (several places) and Vegas - and we'll see in May about Boston and DC.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
I ported from Verizon to Nextel and it happened pretty much on schedule once my Verizon service was reactivated. I had had it deactivated while I was working overseas, and when I returned, decided to try what seemed to be a Nextel plan that was a better deal. For whatever reason, a number that is assigned but "inactive" cannot be ported.
"I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating. And in fourteen days, I had lost exactly two weeks. Joe E. Lewis
You can move to a different state and port your number over to Sprint and keep your same area code and number.....however.....you are limited to the services and plans that are available in the area that your number is from. That is the only glitch with it. So if you see a plan you like it may only be available in certain states, etc. And when you move you may not be able to have that exact promotion, you have to stick to the ones that are available in the area code of your phone.
Occasionally there is a number porting nightmare where it just doesn't get ported right for some reason and take hours of phone calls and bill after bill to get it straightened out, but most often customers leave the stores and the number ports in a matter of hours and everyone is happy. Hope this helps.