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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?
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 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.
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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.
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.