Verizon Drops Opposition To Cell-Number Portability 308
EyesWideOpen writes "Verizon has announced (NYTimes - free registration required) that it would drop its opposition to the proposed F.C.C plan that would allow callers to keep their wireless phone numbers when they switch carriers. Verizon, the nation's largest mobile phone company, was seen as 'the standard-bearer of the opposition against wireless number portability' but has shifted it's position citing the recent court ruling as the reason for doing so. The F.C.C has set a deadline of November 24 for it's rules to take effect. Other mobile phone companies such as Cingular Wireless and AT&T Wireless are still expected to appeal the court ruling. Several previous stories on number portability here(1), here(2), here(3), here(4), and here(5)."
for the registration impeded... (Score:5, Informative)
article text (Score:2, Informative)
Verizon Quits Fight on Rule for Cellphone Numbers
By MATT RICHTEL
Verizon Wireless said yesterday that it would drop its opposition to a government plan to allow callers to keep their wireless phone numbers when they switch carriers. The about-face by Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest mobile phone company, probably means that some other mobile phone operators will have little choice but to yield to the arrangement.
Verizon, which has led a protracted, industrywide effort to prevent the Federal Communications Commission from requiring that cellphone numbers be portable from provider to provider, said it now supported F.C.C. rules scheduled to take effect on Nov. 24 and would end its legal and legislative campaign against them.
Several competitors in the wireless industry said they were surprised by Verizon's announcement and would continue to fight against the changes even without Verizon's cooperation. The industry has argued that the F.C.C. lacks the legal authority to impose portability, and that carrying out the rules would cost it hundreds of millions of dollars.
But in a speech yesterday in New York at a conference for industry analysts, Dennis Strigl, the president and chief executive of Verizon Wireless, said it was time for mobile phone carriers to "stop moaning and groaning" about the portability requirement.
Mr. Strigl said the timing of the announcement was related to a decision earlier this month by a federal appeals court rejecting the industry's argument. The wireless companies contended that the portability requirement was not necessary to protect consumers. "The case was lost in court and now it's time to get on with providing customers with what we believe they want," Mr. Strigl said in an interview. "We're wasting too much time on this."
Roger Entner, a wireless industry analyst with the Yankee Group, a market research firm, characterized Verizon's change in policy as "a 180-degree turn" that removed the single biggest obstacle to portability.
Verizon, he said, had been "the standard-bearer of the opposition against wireless number portability." And now it has "basically turned into the biggest proponent," he said.
Mr. Entner added that Verizon appeared to shift because the legal and legislative options were running out and it did not want to seem like a sore loser. "This means there is no major opposition on the carrier side to portability," he said.
That conclusion was echoed by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who has been pressing the Senate to support portability and reject the wireless industry's delaying efforts. "It pretty much ensures that by November there will be portability," Mr. Schumer said, noting that Verizon had been particularly aggressive in lobbying Congress to prevent the F.C.C. from imposing the requirement.
Mr. Entner and other industry analysts say portability will increase the number of customers who switch wireless carriers â" a trend that is already common and costly to the industry. Of the 145 million cellphone subscribers at the end of March, 40 million to 45 million will switch carriers this year, Mr. Entner said. If portability were in place, 10 million to 12 million more could be expected to switch, he said.
Mr. Entner predicted that the cost to the industry of portability would be $2 billion annually for subsidizing new handsets, activating service and paying sales commissions.
The F.C.C. has maintained that portability will be good for competition. But last July, at the industry's urging, it agreed to delay the effective date of the regulations until this coming November. It was the third such delay by the commission.
Jennifer Bowcock, a spokeswoman for Cingular Wireless, one of the companies that said they would continue to resist the requirement, said Cingular opposed portability because there were more important matters the industry should spend money on, like investments in building the wireless network.
Mark
No Registration Required (Score:5, Informative)
bill that may delay this? (Score:5, Informative)
Verizon [startribune.com]
apparently there is still a bill in congress that may delay the number change date.
Re:Free the phone numbers! (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like the contracts get worse each and each year. I've been with my provider (Cellular South) for about 5 years, and am still under a contract that gives:
100 "anytime" min a month
free incoming calls
unlimited nights and weekends (at 7pm - not 9pm)
for 29.95
Now, don't get me wrong, Celluar South's billing is the worst i've ever seen, I haven't even received a bill in the last 3 years (DON'T sign up for their online billing--it doesn't really exist and then they can't get you back to paper-bill land), but as long as I can remember to use their convoluted automated credit card payment, it's really not a problem.
Cingular's Opposition (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free the phone numbers! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Obviously a move to gain customers (Score:5, Informative)
They probably also believe that they weren't going to get their way and therefore best put their money towards getting the infrastructure in place by the deadline. Also, they probably realised that by making it easier for customers to switch, then with a good marketing campaign, people probably will.
Since cell phone number are virtual, relative to the phone, the real work is actually on the land based switches. Then again given that the infrastructure had to be in place to allow the calls to be routed to the cell phone networks, then the ability to switch phone numbers is only at maximum a firmware update away.
LOL @ Nextel (Score:5, Informative)
The Push To Talk function takes a perfectly good full-duplex cell phone and turns it into a half-duplex walkie-talkie. They even give you a thicker and heavier phone to keep up the illusion!
Nextel fans like to point out that PTT is built into the IDEN network, and other carriers can never offer such a feature. TMobile, however, offers unlimited mobile to mobile calling for $10. You get full duplex all the way with TMobile.
Here's the story, no registration... (Score:1, Informative)
two way walkie talkie feature (Score:1, Informative)
Providers other than Nextel are referring to it as "Push-To-Talk (PTT or P2T)".
Re:Things I can't believe are true about US mobile (Score:3, Informative)
Some, but by no means all, phones here have SIM cards. And you *can* use them to switch providers, it's just that most providers give you a free or very very cheap phone when you sign up for a new service agreement, and it's often got newer technology/features/styles than the old phone you were previously carrying around, so most people just don't bother.
Re:Things I can't believe are true about US mobile (Score:2, Informative)
eg, in the UK all mobile numbers begin with 07xxx
From the Cia World Fact Book: [cia.gov]
United Kingdom: slightly smaller than Oregon
We are talking about much smaller areas here. The US is such a big country, with a lot of landmass, it is a lot harder to manage.
Billing: Another thing to think about in the number portability, is billing. For instance, I get my phone in NY, then swith providers when I move to CA and port my number. So know when I dial someplace in CA, with a NY number is that Roaming, how is the billing computed? When my friends call me from NY, they pay a local call, but how is the billing computed? That is going to be one of the major stumbling blocks to this.
Re:Cost of Portability (Score:2, Informative)
Here in Australia we have had MNP (mobile number portability) for about 18 months now and it works relatively well. I work in sales for a large telco and about every 3rd "new" customer wants to port their number from whatever carrier to ours. The process can take hours but ususally it takes just 15 mins for the number to come across - i have seen it take 2 mins. Sure sometimes it screws up for whatever reason but it has really opened up the market, now that we have a mature market where most people have a mobile anyway and hence would want to keep their number if switching. Oh yeah, and here as in most other countries you can just get a new sim card for the new telco & keep your phone if you want to - you can even copy the numbers in your phone book across between sim cards.
Imagine that - a scary new world where your customers can jump ship & switch carriers if your service is sub-par, keeping their phone number, phone and even phone book!
No wonder efficient, competitive markets scare those telcos whose businesses have become woefully inefficient on the back on monopolistic practices. It is not competitive markets that are the problem, but the business practices of the whinging telcos.
Re:Things I can't believe are true about US mobile (Score:3, Informative)
PCS is proprietary so there's no switching phones from or to that service.
I had GSM service with Voicestream and now AT&T is rolling out/has rolled out GSM service so I should have been able to switch to them if I still had a cell phone by simply swapping my SIM card.
And analog is still the only option available in large parts of the wilderness which Voicestream didn't support when I was a customer because they're digital only.
Re:They left out one very important thing! (Score:5, Informative)
There is talk about producing CDMA phones with a sim card-like ability, but it is currently in vapor stage. Until then, Verizon and Sprint can pretty much dictate what phones live on their networks.
If you really want some type of phone portibility amongst the carriers, your best luck is to get ATT, T-Mobile, or Cingular for their GSM network. Then you can pretty much just move a new sim card to your old phone and voila... Also, if you get one of these phones, you can also use them in Europe (with the appropriate service and if the phone is multi-band))...
Anyways, just my two cents
Dig a little deeper. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OK, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Free the phone numbers! (Score:2, Informative)
Insightful? How about karma-whoring non-sense!
Well, many of these different providers use different wireless architecture/networks (CDMA, TDMA, GSM, etc.) making incompatibly impossibly unless you want to purchase 3-mode and 4-mode phones. Which would make them expensive, defeating the whole purpose of saving cost.
Now, there are many providers who share the same artchitectures, for example: T-Mobile and part of both ATT and Cingular (GSM), Cellular One and part of ATT (TDMA), Verizon and Sprint (CDMA), so those phones should be made compatible. And, for the most part they are, you just have to open it up and flash it with a new list of "preferred" providers (ie, contact towers).
BTW, do accept my apologies, if you didn't know that.
Re:Why is this a right? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free the phone numbers! (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, I do. I switched from SBC/Pac Bell to the digital phone service offered by my cable company. I had to pay a one-time $25 charge for them to buy the number from SBC. And guess what? SBC keeps calling, trying to get me back, and promises I can keep my same number for free. (Which I'm not going to do -- the cable company service is cheaper, I get my cable modem rental fee waived, and unlike SBC, they aren't constantly calling and trying to sell me stuff.)
So you can keep your local number when you switch phone companies. I don't see why cell phone companies should be any different. I hope this will benefit consumers by motivating companies to offer better plans and pricing to keep their customers from switching -- but only time will tell.
AT&T already charging for the changes... (Score:2, Informative)
There is DNS for phone numbers (Score:3, Informative)
Verisign operates a one-stop service for number portability. It's straightforward - they control the number database. You don't get a choice of registrars.
One less-known feature of this approach is that it's used for wiretapping. By messing with the routing database, calls are routed to wiretapping access points before going to their ultimate destination. Verisign offers wiretapping services to law enforcement and various other "authorities" [verisign.com] as a commercial service, under the name NetDiscovery(tm). Coming soon: Verisign wiretapping for voice over IP!
Re:Things I can't believe are true about US mobile (Score:3, Informative)
1: That's what this ruling is about. We'd have this feature long ago if the providers hadn't fought it so much (this regulation has been on the table for nearly 10 years)
2: Not true. Many phones here are GSM, in fact there are three major GSM providers here (AT&T, Cingular, and T-Mobile). Some phones are SIM locked, but you can usually harass customer support into unlocking your phone. The big reason that nobody cares over here is that most providers will give you a free phone with GPRS (or equivelent), a color screen, and all the newest goodies (camera, etc) if you sign up for a year. The Nokia 3650 is free here when you sign up for a year, I understand that it is $200-$300 elsewhere.
3: The cellular infastructure in the US was built 5+ years before it existed elsewhere. It was decided (at the time) that cellphones would get normal numbers (remember, landlines are ubiquidous in the US and there was no available number block for cellphones). If it looks like a regular number, it should be billed like a regular number and any excess charges should be paid by the cellphone user. Thus, recepient pays was the only logical choice. On the flipside, calling a cellphone in the US costs no more than calling a landline (local = free, long distance = a few cents a minute).
By the way, there *are* CPP providers and plans in the US. Nextel sells such a plan, as do some other providers. One day every plan may have CPP, just as roaming and long distance charges have disappeared from plans.
4: Numbers are geographically fixed, but you don't have to change when you move. Most companies are happy to give you a non-local number.
Cellular technology isn't playing catch-up in the US. We have GPRS and MMS and all of the features you have in Europe. SMS works fine, even between providers. My GSM phone works on nearly every GSM network in the country, and I never pay extra wherever I go in this country of 300 million. I get unlimited GPRS data (not billed by thr kilobyte), unlimited night/weekend minutes, unlimited SMS, unlimited calling to and from phones on the same provider, no long distance anywhere in the country, and 200 minutes anytime else. I pay $40 per month, and I think I get what I pay for.
Believe it or not, the US has more GSM towers deployed than Western Europe, and more CDMA towers than any other country. We also have more diversity than you might believe. One company offers a plan that only works in your home area (usually your city and suburbs, you can pay a buck or two to get your whole state) but gives you unlimited anytime minutes for $32 a month. AT&T has a plan that gives you unlimited anytime, anywhere minutes for $80 a month. Some providers have unlimited SMS or unlimited data. Some have unlimited off-peak minutes. Some have CPP. Some have unlimited minutes to others on the same network. Some have shared minute plans.
So, it's hard to sum up the US wireless market. GSM is the standard, but so is CDMA. CPP exists, but not always.
So, in conclusion, the US wireless market is different from anywhere else. Perhaps it is because of the prevelence of landlines, which are affordable and unlimited. Perhaps it is cultural. Perhaps it has to do wit the fact that we had cellphones 5 years before everyone else.
So we have to put up with some annoying things. But we also get some nice perks.
The US wireless market has been playing catch-up for seven years. Today, they have caught up. 8 years ago, there was no digital cellular service in the US. Now, GSM and CDMA are the standards. SMS is the sandard. And MMS and GPRS and 3G data services are the standards. The GSM providers are uniting against the CDMA providers. And with free phones and number portability, I wouldn't be surprised if CPP becomes the standard. Or if unlimited anytime minutes become the standard. Capitalism works best when there is fierce competition. That's why AMD and Intel produce faster CPUs for lower prices every year.