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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?
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.