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Cell Phones Companies Fight Number Portability
Posted by
chrisd
on Thu Apr 10, 2003 02:48 AM
from the shocker dept.
from the shocker dept.
andy1307 writes "The Washington Post is reporting that wireless companies are opposing mobile number portability. According to the law as it is being written, customers would be able to transfer wired phone numbers to a wireless service. Not surprisingly, Verizon is the wireless company opposing the law."
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Cell Phones Companies Fight Number Portability
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The US Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.federalunion.org.uk/youth)
If only global companies would look outside of national markets for best practice, consumers would have a much better life.
Re:The US Again... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The US Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The US Again... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem isn't roaming per se. In a given European country, all telcos operating within the country will have (almost) complete coverage. Roaming only happens when you are in another country, and even that is going away (pretty much everywhere has a Vodafone-owned operator now, for example). I can't remember when I last had to even think about roaming, it's all very transparent, and doesn't even cost that much if your operator is set up for it.
The issue is calling a phone on a network operated by another company. The precedent for this is the difference in cost between calling locally and nationally. Now the distance isn't so much physical as it is topological. Calling someone on your own network is like a local call, routing it to another operator is like a national call. It is fair that this costs more (but not much more), because the telco (or rather, the telco's equipment) has to do more work to connect a cross-network call. It's like peering arrangements between ISPs, it will almost always be cheaper (in bytes per day per dollar) to move data around within your own network than to route it via a peering point.
US cellular plans in a nutshell (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.chriscanfield.net/)
But the cell phone industry in the US is a scam. Here's how it works. First off, you estimate your usage... be it 100 minutes, 400 minutes, or 1,000 minutes. If you are too high you are charged every month for minutes you don't use. If you are too low... and you really don't want to be too low... you spend about 75c per minute. 300 and 500 minutes at the beginning of the month might be 20 and 30 dollars, but at the end of the month a 300 minute plan going to 500 minutes will cost you 170 dollars.
That's not all. Going from local to state-wide to nation-wide roaming might cost 5 - 10 dollars per month in advance, but if you take a trip outside your calling area, and give a loved one two 30 minute update calls, expect to pay an extra 40 dollars. Larger calling areas don't necessarily mean no roaming as companies have implemented plans with off-network roaming in your home calling area... that dead zone at your favorite resturant now costs 40-60c per minute.
They also charge for long-distance, which is an example of the aformentioned double-dipping. If a person is calling you, they are paying long distance to reach you (5-15c per minute), but you are paying long distance charges to recieve the call too (15-25c per minute). Thankfully many cellular companies have plans that include this "service" for a small fee, though the fact of the matter is that they just want your money.
To lure people into using their cellphones more frequently, all carriers offer promotional night and weekend minutes. The night time has slowly crept from 6PM to 9PM, and the morning from 9AM to 6AM, but the offer is valid... usually for a limited time. AT&T is famous for cutting off promotional night and weekend minutes when a contract expires without telling the customer, which generally leads to one multi-hundred dollar bill per customer.
The upsetting thing is that of course this is all a paper exercise. There is no resource that is allocated at the beginning of the month, no bandwidth that your carrier has to purchase at truly tremendous rates if you use more than your allotted space. They don't have to send a lackey from New York to Boston to buy emergency extra air time from a carrier there. It's just a form of billing, and nobody would put up with it in any other industry.
Landline portability has been a reality for many years here... I know people who have taken their number with them throughout several locations without any sevice degradation. The article cites the %25 turnover rate as a sign of healthy competition, but numbers that high are a sign of very unhappy customers. I don't know anyone who owns a cellular phone and who hasn't been hit with at least one ludicrously high bill... $100 dollar bills are common. And while friendly, support always refuses to do anything about it except bump you up to a more expensive plan for the coming months so that you can hope it doesn't happen again... of course when you move up a plan you automatically make another one-year contract so that you can't join that ticked-off %25 churn without paying the hefty "cancelation" fees to pay for services not rendered.
Cellular companies don't want anything that would allow people to leave because they know they treat us badly, plain and simple.
Re:The US Again... (Score:5, Insightful)
IIRC this feature of financially "binding" customers to their existing networks (or encouraging e.g. families to use the same operator) is under investigation as a possibly illegal marketing strategy. 5 minutes of googling didn't help in finding a reference, but I recall reading about it in the paper here. So it could be merely a temporary anomaly in mobile pricing.
Re:The US Again... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Saturday January 31 2004, @05:25PM)
I had the dubious pleasure of working on the NP project for corporate customers of one of our telco's. The telcos' claim that NP is an expensive requirement that will bring zero ROI is true... this was not a simple project to do, and the marketing guys explained that NP allows you to steal customers from competitors but that it does little for your bottom line, as you'll have to lower prices.
We are already working on the next step: number portability for bank accounts!! Oh yes, finally I can go to my bank and tell them to get stuffed, while keeping my bank account nr. Switching bank accounts is an even bigger pain than switching telephone numbers, especially in the Netherlands where people tend to use lots of direct debit invoicing. The banks know this, and banking service in Holland is generally dismal compared to other countries.
Re:The US Again... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday October 17 2002, @02:53AM)
Oh and by the way we don't have number portability between wired and cell phones, just between cell phone providers (that's what the article is about)
Re:The US Again... (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.a2b2.com/)
Rus
Re:The US Again... (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.isu.edu/~cramkenn)
FAQ [slashdot.org]
Transferring (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Wires, don't let the door hit you on the way out (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.witsend.com/Timothy | Last Journal: Thursday April 10 2003, @03:24PM)
Well yeah... (Score:5, Insightful)
Were this law to pass, that wall of contention would be eliminated and you'd be able to take off to a better plan at a better provider if you wished.
It is Verizon, too (Score:5, Interesting)
It's weird they've fought this for so long because Verizon's one of the top cell companies in customer service, I'd have expected that they'd be eager to beat the tar out of Sprint, say, once people are free to change their carriers without changing numbers.
And it is a huge deal. I know a couple of real estate agents, in particular, who complain constantly about how awful their service from company x is, but they won't change if it means they have to get all their letterhead changed, have to get all their contacts to swap out the speed-dial and so on.
What's even more baffling, now that I think about it, is that LNP essentially guarantees an industry shakeout, because churn shoots through the roof as customers move to whoever has good service in their area, and we'd see the customers who signed up for (say) Sprint because of good introductory offers move on. A couple fewer regional and national competitors and the industry would be much healthier.
Which is good for my job. -- q
AT&T supports Number Portability (Score:5, Informative)
(http://slashdot.org/~panaceaa | Last Journal: Friday July 14 2006, @09:19PM)
Here in Silicon Valley, most of my friends were initially lured to Cingular's low prices. When they found out their phones didn't even work at their own houses, they mostly switched to AT&T. But some stay with Cingular because they are reluctant to change their phone numbers.
On a side note: I wonder how many people in California would have been lured to Cingular if it was still called BellSouth Wireless?
Re:AT&T supports Number Portability (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://devers.homeip.net:8080/blog/ | Last Journal: Tuesday April 12 2005, @08:34AM)
My only gripe -- and this isn't entirely their fault -- is that I bought the Nokia 6210i phone thinking that I'd be able to use the IR port on the top of the phone to exchange data with a Palm Pilot or IR equipped computer ...but the port is decorative on version of the phone sold in the USA. That's Nokia's fault, not CellONE/Cingular's. Otherwise, I'm happy with the phone and I'm happy with the service. The only thing that would make me want to switch now is if I could apply my number to a service that would let me use a more advanced phone (*working* IR, or better still bluetooth, etc), but that doesn't necessarily mean switching to a different provider. I'll just be happy to have that option when the tiime comes to upgrade.
By way of comparison, my company provides some of us with Nextel/Motorola phones. Mine is a Motorola i1000plus. I can't stand that piece of junk. It has more features than you can shake a stick at, to be sure (web, walkie talkie, speakerphone, etc) but the usability of the phone is about as good as the customer service on an Aeroflot flight -- *awful*. Half the features I can't figure out how to tap into, and the other half I can use only after going through an elaborate pantomime without making any false keystrokes or I have to start over again. Yuck. I'd be happy with less features and better UI, but none of the other Motorolas seem to be any better than this piece of junk. Hence I've kept the Nokia, which aside from the IR port thing is a truly great phone. (Okay, enough UI ranting, the topic is service quality.)
As for experiences with other providers, my fiance is a current AT&T customer, and she *hates* their customer service. She bought the phone because of the rebates & intro offers, but they tried to get out of it when she got the phone, and she ended up having to spend more than six hours on the phone with their [third party!] customer service agency over the course of several calls and a couple of weeks to get things fixed, and was ready to ditch the service before the first month was even up. Before AT&T she had Sprint (good service, terrible reception at our home), and over the past few years she has jumped around among several providers looking for someone she'd be happy with.
All through that time my phone has been with the same company with, again, no serious complaints. Everyone has different experiences with these companies of course. It seems to me that your best bet is to get the opinion of other people *in your area*. Cingular sucks on the west coast, eh? Well I've been happy with them here in New England, but it seems like AT&T is bad here & good there. Other will vary as well.
In the end through, number portability will hopefully level a lot of this. It's a pain that people can get locked into a company that has little incentive to improve their service, when switching providers is so disruptive. Having that option will break the fact that these companies are like a bunch of little monopolistic fiefdoms, and force them to start competing to keep customers happy. Is that a burden for them to support? Tough shit, why should customers care? That's their problem. As long as NP isn't available, they're going to be able to let their customer service deteriorate because they know customers won't be likely to switch even if service does get bad. Now they'll be forced to pay attention. Surely that has to be a win for consumers.
The main problem might be... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday January 19 2003, @09:20AM)
I'd be curious on how it would work if a home number was ported, and then listed in the White Pages under that certain name. Since most portable phones are not listed anywhere, and there are laws against telemarketing to a cell phone, it could become a legal jungle once those numbers are switched. But it would be nice if I could just have the one number listed as a home number, since my Cell is all that I use.
No Surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday January 09 2004, @03:09PM)
Surprice! (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://won-tolla.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday September 12 2003, @10:20AM)
With a SIM-card based GSM-system, such as is universally adopted in Europe and large parts of the world, you can take your phone to another provider.. or buy any phone that takes your fancy and use on any network you prefer. I got a collegua with two simcard in one phone (and thus two numbers); one for work, with the provider most benefical for that use, and one for private use, with another provider thats cheaper for that use. Only one phone thought, so he has to remember to switch cards as he leaves work.
Anywho, the way most countries has done it - one standarised system for infrastrukture - has given a level playingfield for competiton. No longer are the customer tied to one provider, if he is unhappy, he can take his phone and leave (and for the last few years here in Norway, his number too).
Re:Surprice! (Score:5, Informative)
Each GSM phone, for example, has a unique code known as an IMEI number. If your phone gets stolen, report the number to the police, who can use it to return your phone to you in case of theft.
Now, this of course works if the police happens to come across your phone (it is of more assistance in prosecuting the thief than in anything else). However, some countries are already experimenting in IMEI blocking, this is reality already in e.g. Australia. All carriers are working to come up with a global IMEI blocking solution. See e.g. here [aca.gov.au]. So the best of both worlds (detachable SIM + immunity to theft) should be available Any Century Now (r)(tm) to the GSM-toting world.
US phone technology (Score:3, Funny)
if(article.story.indexOf("phone")!=-1 && user.location.ToLower()=="usa"){
phone.advanceme
}
What about T-mobile? (Score:1)
What I'd rather have than portability... (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem now is that while I have a national calling plan where calls anywhere in the US and Canada are the same price, people calling me from the next street may have to pay long distance charges. This is absurd -- though I live on the east coast, people calling me locally have to dial a California number. And keeping my number is important -- it's my established business and personal number, wherever I happen to be.
So, why can't we just have national area codes for cell phone users with national plans?
Why not as the same way on the 'net? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well now, I purchased my own domain name and I run my own mail server. If somebody wants to email me, they aim it at user@mydomainname.com (my domain hidden to protect from
What I'm saying, is have the similar sort of dial-setup. You can either buy a phone redirection circuit, or if there's dealers out there, buy a redirection phone number.
Old style=
Caller => You
New style=
Caller => Redirection service => wherever you specify
My plan's sort of like DNS for phones.
Okay. WHY?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://girlsarepretty.net/ | Last Journal: Thursday May 12 2005, @06:42PM)
Lame, lame, lame mobile phone providers. Get a clue. Service your customers. Provide value for the money. How about more anytime minutes per month? Or how about if you don't use your anytime minutes this month, they roll over to next month?
Come on, people. Stop sitting comfortably on your piles of ill-gotten profits and serve the customers like you're supposed to be doing. I swear, the way our legislature is bending over and taking it from the corps in this country is astounding.
The real reason for the phone number shortage (Score:4, Insightful)
If we didn't have this situation, there would be no need for the constant splitting of area codes.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://etoy.com/)
Er, yes your honour each customer who intends to keep his number due to crapp^H^H^H^H^H reasons, which we really don't understand will cost us 2$37.
Lawyers for the CTIA and Verizon Wireless claim the rule is unnecessary because competition for the nation's 144 million wireless subscribers remains robust.
Yes guvernor, we spent 230'000'000$ annually for lawyers and lobbying in order to fuck^H^H^H^H provide for better customer service...
If only this passes.. (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://www.vitaligent.com/)
never underestimate the powers of condescension - It knows not the bounds of time or space
Hong Kong (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Thursday May 08 2003, @05:23AM)
The country code is +852, and mobile phone numbers always start with either 9 or 6. All the numbers are governed centrally in a pool by a regulatory body.
When you subscribe to a network, you would pay a surchange to the regulatory body for the "number", and then it belongs to the network you are subscribed to. When you change networks, you keep your old number but you have to pay about US$10 to the regulatory body to change your information.
In this way, there is better competition between operators (there are 7 in this small country!!), and the users are not bound in anyway to an operator that offers shitty service.
There is a flip-side, however. Here SMS'es between networks are charged at about USD 0.20, but SMS'es in the same network are charged USD 0.10. There is no way of determining whether your receipient is in the same network! Even if you know, they might have changed their mobile network...
Also, with MMS coming up, it gives additional problems if you do not know which network your receipient is in. But the networks are opening their MMS services for inter-network sending soon, so it would be solved (just like SMS'es).
Australia introduced this recently (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.houseofwack.com/)
...and Australia is roughly the same size in area as the contiguous United States, so the argument that it is only due to small coverage for telcos in Europe (that some people have been posting) is hogwash.
Some more information:
http://www.aca.gov.au/consumer_info/publications/b rochures/mnp.htm
You can move phone numbers between GSM and CDMA in Australia as well as between Telcos. There are about four-five players competing for mobile telephony in Aus, but they have national reach and aren't fragmented like the mess in the USA.
Portability rules! (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a Telco (Score:5, Informative)
Number portability, atleast for us, is a major expensive pain in the @ss.
We are planning on moving towards number portabilty, because we feel it's ultimately good for everyone involved - new cutomers that move into our area can keep old numbers etc. etc. We also get a happier customer out of the deal, if he/she can choose us over another competitor simply because they can keep their phone number - we feel that will offset the cost of churn.
The problem is, billing systems need to be updated, massive changes in the switching equipment need to be maintained AND - we need cooperation from other Telco's. In Canada as well, there's the legal issues of satisfying the government, (CRTC), so unfourtunately everything moves at a snail's pace.
I'm not sure about other companies in the US, but I don't think it's a typical problem of the "huge corporations trying to screw the customers" in this case, which is often trumpeted by the majority of slashdotters. Basically a major rework of the phone system needs to be done throughot North America to make this work properly, and sadly this is going to take some time.
Re:I work for a Telco (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://anomalyuk.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 23 2003, @11:32AM)
This is consistent with my experience working for a small telco in the UK when portability was coming in for non-geographic numbers (0800 etc)
We were strongly in favour of it, as it made it easier for us to take business from competitors, but it was a lot of work -- I was working on the issue for more than 6 months, plus a lot of bedding in afterwards, and that was just the billing and inter-company charging infrastructure. If exchange upgrades are needed, that's a very large delay and expense.
Obviously that's not much excuse for opposing it, and consumers need to keep pushing for it, but it's worth hanging on to a reasonable amount of patience...
Utter filth... (Score:2, Informative)
(http://cloudcitydigital.com/)
"I would rather see our resources devoted to safety of life and protection of property rather than addressing regulations of convenience," said Brian Fontes, vice president for federal regulations for Cingular Wireless. "
Can we go back to fewer area codes too? (Score:2, Informative)
(http://0xd8.0x77.0x54.0xf6/)
Those stupid 10,000 blocks are also one of the causes of the proliferation of area codes. I have already had to purchase new letterhead because of new area codes.
The FCC system now assigns phone companies blocks of 10,000 numbers; the phone companies do not pay for them. If the phone companies had to bid for them, maybe they would have a persuasive argument.
Playing Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's just play devil's advocate for a minute. In the UK it used to be the case that you could tell the mobile operator from the dialing code of the number, e.g. 07866 for Orange, 07788 for Vodafone. (This can still be done at UK Phone Information [ukphoneinfo.com].) This was useful, since many tariffs give you free or cheaper calls to numbers belonging to the same operator. Since numbers became portable, you can no longer make an assumption as to the operator.
While it certainly an advantage for the consumer for his/her number to be portable, it may end up costing him/her more.
Good idea, hard to implement (Score:4, Insightful)
For instance, operators get large series of numbers. This can be blocks of tens of thousands to tens of millions of numbers, with a specific prefix. Just like Internet routing, those blocks (or prefixes, if you want to think that way) decide where a call goes.
Now, what happens when you want to make a number portable? Well, those blocks still exist. The problem is that whenever you make a phonecall, the connection goes to the operator who owns the block. That operator, in turn, looks up the number and decides what to do with it. If it's a number that's moved to another operator, they either redirect the connection, or establishes additional connections to the new operator (depending on the technology used). The costs of doing so is sometimes greater than just accepting a call to one of their own customers.
Now, add the cost of updating the exchanges, the billing systems, educating the staff and so on and you'll quickly realise that this is not a trivial task. Also remember that this adds a huge amount of complexity to the telephone system, a system that's already overly complex.
Compare this, for instance, with trying to implement portable IP-numbers. It's not the same thing (different technology among other things), but the complexity issues are similar.
I don't blame them (Verizon) (Score:1, Insightful)
I would cancel my Verzion phone as soon as this becomes law.
My number is so important to me that I am paying them 25/mo just to forward my number to my Nextel.
I don't use verizon service at all. This really does suck.
I think many others would love to avoid this service fee and keep their good number and choose providers that work best in their area.
The wireless market has becoming so saturated and too competitive, this won't help them in any way.
It would help us wireless users tho. I'm all for it.
I work in the U.S. wireless telecom industry... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://www.dragonflymarsh.com/)
A lot of people are complaining about the fact that in the United States, we only give out blocks of 10,000 numbers. That simply isn't true anymore. Most people don't realize this, but last November, all non-GSM (more on U.S. GSM in a sec) U.S. Cell companies 'split' their phone numbers into two identical numbers... one called the MDN (Mobile Directory Number, or Mobile Dialable Number), and the MIN (Mobile Identification Number). The MDN is what you actually dial when you call your friend on their cell phone, and the MIN is (sort of) what the call routes on (actually, it routes on a different number called the Local Routing Number or LRN, which is associated with the MIN, but I digress...).
Anyway, when the numbers got split, it because possible to dole out phone numbers in smaller blocks... if someone needs a block of 1000 numbers and it's in the same cost cen