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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 center (think long distance charges) as someone else who needs 1000 numbers, they can share the same block of 10000 MDNs and use different MINs with different LRNs. This whole process is called 'Number Pooling'.
All of this also allows for WNP. So essentially, the software is already doing all of the 'hard stuff' today... we've been using two phone numbers since last November. On Nov 24th 2003, you will be able to port your MDN. Your MIN will change. So your dialable number might go from Verizon to Cingular, but your MIN will change from a Verizon MIN to a Cingular MIN. You and your friends don't notice any difference... think of your dialable number like a pointer to a MIN.
Confused? See why Verizon doesn't want to do this? I think WNP is a good thing, but I barely understand this stuff, and I helped write the damned software that's supposed to do all this... imagine training hundreds of customer care staff on how this stuff works.
GSM in the U.S. is a little less scary 'cuz it was designed from the ground-up to route on a separate number from the dialable number (they call the diable number the MSISDN... forget what it stands for off the top of my head... it's pronounced 'Mizz-din'.) GSM routes (again, sort of) on the IMSI, which is programmed into the SIM card. It's kinda sorta like combining the ESN (serial number on the phone) and the LRN from the TDMA/CDMA world into one number.
Possible privacy concerns? (Score:1)
When you roam now, the switch in the network you're in tells your home switch where you are & the phone call gets routed there. But with portability, you won't have a home switch and a call will have to go to a data base to find out who you're connected with, connect to that system, and then that system will look for where you are. Currently, the call is just connected to your system & it looks you up.
The real problem occurs when you are roaming & the call originates locally, because until that data base is in place, nationally, the local phone company doesn't know you are right next door & has to find out who you are hooked up with & send the call to them. Now, the phone company knows that if you have a Cingular number, Cingular knows where you are.
So, for privacy reasons, number portability may not be as good as it sounds at face value.
Or get a lifetime GoNumber, not perfect, but... (Score:2)
(http://www.owonder.com/)
No, a GoNumber [gonumber.net] cannot be dialed into a phone directly, but there is some potential for an intelligent routing feature to be introduced at the right time.
Time for a change (Score:2)
(http://www.crypt.co.za/)
Isn't it about time we took a long-term look at numbers and routine, and asked whether we're heading in the right direction?
From my (limited) understanding of the telecoms industry, it is standard practice in landlines to use area and exchange prefixes, making it impractical or at least very costly to keep your number if you move. Most operators offer a compromise by way of a call forwarding service (at a cost, of course).
Cellular calls, like land calls, are routed by a prefix. Each operator has one or more assigned prefix codes, and any number with that prefix will be routed to that operator. It is therefore costly to an operator to support you keeping your number if you change networks: not only does the operator have to have new hardware and software to keep a list of "moved" numbers and route them appropriately, but the number of available / allocatable numbers in their prefix ranges is reduced.
While I like the idea of keeping my number if I change operators, I just don't think its practical. I won't get to keep my IP address if I change ISPs, nor do I keep my street address if I move house, nor my telephone number if my geographic location changes significantly. I don't keep my customer number if I change my supplier, nor my account number if I change banks.
The "way out" is to look into the future and define an extension to the telephone system (say 11 digit national dialing instead of 10) in which the number you dial is abstracted from the "address" of the phone, in much the way that domains and IP addresses are related.
This also allows for other capabilities such as a single number covering multiple services: your cell phone, land line, fax, etc can all have the "same" number, differing only by a prefix or suffix digit indicating the desired service. So to call you at home I would dial 6-012-345-6789; to call on your cell 7-012-345-6789.
The service digit could also include a distinction between regular and priority calls, so you can set your phone to "disturb in emergency" mode and (if you trust everyone who has your number) only be disturbed by priority calls.
Of course, there is a down-side to this. You get to trade convenience for privacy (as always). Giving out your contact number would mean cell as well as home numbers. But then there's no technical reason that you can't get multiple numbers and only have one service on each.
Re:Time for a change (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.edgeio.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday March 09 2005, @10:42AM)
The telcos whined about until it happened, but in the end it turns out that most of their newer systems could easily handle it anyway.
The thing is most routing doesn't happen by the dialled number any more, and haven't for a very long time.
Hostile to current customers (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://belgand.livejournal.com/)
I have no idea how the industry expects to do well by mistreating customers trying to sustain them with repeat business (and yes, contracts are abuse) or locking them into contracts so they can't complain and hopefully won't switch too soon. I can't really think of any other industries that consider routine abuse of customers to be a viable business strategy. That is, unless their idea is to keep people jumping around from company to company every 2 years or so at great inconvenience grinding up new users as they come along.
Why do phones have numbers at all? (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.windy.gen.nz/ | Last Journal: Wednesday January 05 2005, @03:37PM)
The fact that telephones have numbers at all in the digital age seems silly. Well established psychological research has shown a very long time ago that people's short term memory isn't good at dealing with big numbers. The whole concept of using phone numbers to call people goes against usability principles, yet there doesn't seem to be a serious effort to get rid of them in most places. It's not just legacy technology, it's legacy industrial age thinking.
Firstly, telephones shouldn't normally be the addressee. People should be the addressee. Secondly, people shouldn't have to have numbers, they should have names.
Many phones already try to emulate names by providing calling directories, and it's a real hack. I don't know the numbers for many of my friends because I rely on my phone to hide it, and I only interact with the names to call people. I hate to think what'd happen if I lost my phone, though. Also when someones phone number/address changes, it really messes things up for everyone who knows them.
So how long is it going to be before digital phones and digital networks actually do away with numbers altogether, in a way where other people can change their phone's address without everyone else having to know or care? Obviously there would be numbers in the system somewhere, but they shouldn't be needed in a user interface any more than the primary key of a typical database table is needed.
The underlying motive according to Cingular . . . (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Wednesday February 01 2006, @08:39AM)
I am relatively stuck with Cingular because my phone number is the same as the Apple Computer 1-800 number, except with my area code. It has become my gimmick to help people remember me who I can't hand out a business card to. ( I simply say my number is Dah Dah Dah APPLE) That said, I have made sure that all my friends and family got cell phones long ago from AT&T, Verizon, etc and chose the last four numbers as 2775 as well - so if I ever am forced to switch (until this passes) I have options. However, since Bellsouth Mobility became Cingular I have been very satisfied with them and have even been able to become a service distributor because I have, over the last year, been able to sell 20+ T68i cellphones to my customers.
Just stop turning the numbers over so damn fast (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one could do without it. (Score:3, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Sunday June 19 2005, @11:58PM)
Think about it -- it's another $21.00 a year. It's really not worth it. So now, we have another new law and new tax -- how convenient.
That's funny, (Score:1)
(http://slashdot.org/)
Anticompetetive (Score:2)
Waitasec.... (Score:1)
Otherwise, I WANT A REFUND, WITH INTEREST!!!!!!!!!!!
This shit threatens to disrupt my otherwise mellow demeanor
Becareful what you ask for (Score:3, Interesting)
911 Resources? (Score:2)
again... (Score:1)
(http://www.langoats.com/)
No Seriously, the claim by the wireless companies that it will do little to competition is just rediculously underestimated. It makes switching phone services easier and more attractive to consumers, thus increasing competition. How will their costs also be raised? Assuming the number-portability system is implemented and is easy to use by telephone companies (I'm not a phone guru, I don't know myself), labor won't be significantly increased, they might have to buy a computer or something to use the new system... the costs will in all likelyhood be minimal (If someone can refute this I'm all ears, that was those were the only costs I could think of).Personally I can't wait to port my number out of this horrible U.S. Cellular contract I'm in.
Sure, maybe my point of view is biased because I'm an unhappy consumer with my phone plan. But changing my cell phone number would be a headache to both my clients and my family/friends, and this (and the 2 months i still have left on my 2-year contract) is the reason I haven't switched cell phone contracts yet.
You're taught in MicroEconomics 101 that perfect competition exists when a product is homogeneus among vendors and there are many vendors in the market. By making the numbers portable to different vendors, the product (airtime in this case) is only becoming more homogeneus. Hopefully the courts will realize the phone companies claims to be bullshit and throw them out soon enough.
Voice over IP (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I'm sick and tired of telcos. This month I am moving to a new home so I did some research into VoIP. I found a service from Vonage [vonage.com] which allows me to setup a VoIP connection to a POTS system over broadband. It is SIP and H323 compatible. It costs only $39.99 a month and gives me unlimited free calls everywhere in the US and Canada, anytime. Not only that, but because it isn't classified as a communications service there are no surcharges. Just for comparison, Verizon offers a similar flat fee package for $64.99. The taxes and surcharges that they conveniently separate from the price add another $40 per month.
Good riddance...
It's the technology / can't get it working (Score:1)
(http://www.schmartboard.com/DPETX)
All these companies have to connect up and figure a way to make it work and believe me they are trying but it seems a difficult task at best.
Nick Powers
Ads Effect News... (Score:2)
(http://www.geocities.com/pennsol221)
Phone Identities via DNS (Score:4, Insightful)
We should add a new DNS record type for international telephone numbers. It'd be reasonably easy to have a DNS gateway over cellphone networks so that phones can resolve the phone number from a name before dialling.
Sure, it would be harder to enter the number the first time on a numeric keypad, but you'd store the name in your phone's memory so that you only have to type it once, and those with phones with QWERTY keyboards would be set!
It sure would be nice to be able to dial sales.somecompany.com rather than having to look up their number first. The main benefit, though, is the abstraction -- people can change their numbers and only be out of touch for the time it takes for the DNS record to expire.
The benefit of using a separate record type is that, like with MX records, it could coexist with other record types so that, for example, support.ibm.com could resolve to both an IP address and a telephone number.
I'm sure some company would soon step in with cheap 'catchy' phone hostnames in similar vein to free, throwaway email for those who don't have the know-how, desire or funds to run their own domain.
Why DNS? Because it's already there, and it works well.
WNP (Score:1)
Vince
Outdated? Maybe we are looking at this all wrong? (Score:1)
There are other issues, like would people accept it, what to do about the 100,000 Bob Smiths out there, and how could one implement this over the existing network?
The only real practical solution I can see without starting over from scratch would be to have "smart" phones with modems in them, that could talk to the computers in the phone companies. Then if I change my number, the smart phones would all get the new information from the phone companies, and quitely change the speed-dial memories without the user even knowing. But this brings up other problems. Do you really want the phone company to know everyone you have programmed in speed-dial?
It's all about the consumer, no? (Score:2)
(Last Journal: Thursday February 05 2004, @11:30PM)
Heh. "Doing so would increase costs, and not help competition."
Whatever dude. Doing this would be so much easier for the consumer, because then we could stick with just one number for the rest of our lives. It also improves competition, because then the consumer doesn't have to care about having to stay with a particular company to retain a phone number.
Stupid rich fucktards trying to make even more money by lying out of their asses. :-)
It's the handset, stupid! (Score:2)
(http://tekel.wordpress.com/ | Last Journal: Friday November 19 2004, @10:45PM)
I have 2 basic questions. The first is for the cell providers: why do you encourage your customers to switch providers by offering aggressive discounts on handsets ONLY to new subscribers? Why not reward your existing customer base with even deeper discounts on handsets? The way I see it, AT&T seems to think that my number is worth at least $600 to me. They're wrong.
The second question is: Will number portability force the providers to behave the way I think they should, by offering discounts on handsets to existing customers to encourage loyalty rather than restricting discounts to new activations, to entice customers away from competitors' plans?
I'm in Oakland, CA. Part of my job is to negotiate wireless contracts for healthcare providers, and as a part of making sure we do a good job, we have a satisfaction survey we give to all our customers. This survey asks people how happy they are with their cell service/handset/calling features/customer service from the wireless provider. And the results we have consistently seen for the past 9 months are: as long as you can get service in the places you need it (home, grocery, work, airport, freeway between...) then the providers are basically interchangeable. The pricing and available minutes are very very very close to identical (the one standout is that sprint is still offering "unlimited" data service, while everyone else has data plans that bill by the kb- but it's CDMA2k instead of GPRS, and you can't send SMS messages yet via CDMA2k, so... it's basically unlimited crap).
In the bay area, in LA, in Seattle, in Portland, nobody gives a tinker's damn whether they're on cingular or T-mobile or AT&T or verizon or Sprint. The % of complaints about poor service are very similar, and the locations of "black holes" (like inside a concrete box building full of rebar in the walls) are also surprisingly similar.
all anyone cares about is the handset- people choose providers based on how cool the phones are, and how much of a rebate they can get from the provider for that handset in the market they're in. Now, this makes sense to me, because I really want a Treo 270 or 300, but i want to keep my AT&T number. Right now, my options are
1) keep my AT&T number, buy the Treo 270 direct from Handspring [handspring.com], for $700.00 USD (!!!) with no rebates, because I'm not activating new service, buy a SIM from AT&T, don't tell them what phone I'm going to use it in (because AT&T doesn't support the treo yet) and increase my usage plan to pay for the GPRS data connection.
2) give up the AT&T number, in favor of one from Cingular or T-Moblie, and buy the Treo 270 with GPRS from Amazon [amazon.com]for $500 less, or
3) give up the AT&T number, in favor of one from Sprint, and buy the Treo 300 from Amazon [amazon.com] for $550 less than I would have to pay for the same functionality on AT&T.
telemarketing (Score:1)
If, as stated in the article, number portability goes through and landline numbers can be moved to mobile phones and vice versa, what will stop the telemarketers from calling my cell phone?
Re:Cellphone Spam (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
If they do call you, just do as you would at home and keep them on the line as long as possible, feeding them utterly bogus information. Either that or start chatting up the telemarketer, especially if they are the same sex as you.
Re:Cellphone Spam (Score:1)
Re:Cellphone Spam (Score:1)