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Cell Phone Number Portability Ruling 224

Posted by michael from the dragging-their-feet dept.
Ken@WearableTech writes "Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off. Verizon's action on the FCC's number portability ruling was dismissed by the D.C. Court of Appeals. The court found that Verizon had waited far too long to bring the challenge and it also sided with the FCC's interpretation of the Law rather than Verizon. Barring any other action we may see number portability this year. Unfortunately, Verizon is already lobbying to have the law changed. But it was also nice to see Cingular was on the FCC's side of the case."
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Cell Phone Number Portability Ruling More

Cell Phone Number Portability Ruling

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  • This is easy for Verizon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) * on Friday June 06, 2003 @06:58PM (#6136056) Journal
    Verizon keeps complaining about the costs associated with this (getting themselves able to handle portable numbers with celluar phones). So, why don't they just do what every other corporation does to save money: hire half-assed tech support and software developers in foreign nations, and blame the poor state of the economy (which never hurts them, since their alarmingly high revenue stream comes from the unregulated Baby Bell status) to cut employee benefits here stateside? What's the big deal? It's a proven cost-saving method for corporations.

    Excuse me, why are you telling me that Hell is hot? Why should I care?

    PS: fist post fools

    • Re:This is easy for Verizon (Score:5, Informative)

      by bug506 ( 584796 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:09PM (#6136130) Homepage
      I don't understand why they are complaining about the costs of this--they are just passing it on to their customers anyway. And, perhaps most annoyingly, they don't pass it on to the consumers in the price of the calling plans, they tack it on as a "surcharge" (the government lets them do this). Imagine going to Wal-Mart, and when you pay for your purchase you are not only charged tax, but you are charged an explicit surcharge for the various fees arising from government mandates that they had to incur.

      From the article:

      "Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, the subcommittee's ranking Democrat, said he opposes another delay because wireless companies already collect customer surcharges for both the number portability and 911 efforts."

      All of their arguments seem very disingenuous.

      It seems to me that they are afraid that when a customer calls in with a problem, they might actually have to fix now that it will be less painful for the customer to switch.
      • I don't understand why they are complaining about the costs of this

        Just a big business' resistance to change. They do it because they can, pretty much like Microsoft's antics.

        All it means is that the US is going to have to catch up with the rest of the world re number portability. Most civilised countries have had it for years.

    • Re:This is easy for Verizon (Score:5, Informative)

      by Total_Wimp ( 564548 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:47PM (#6136311)
      Why is it that they complain about the costs for things that actually help consumers but they have no problem implementing things that block us from saving money?

      My new mLife plan and cell phone have the following âoefeaturesâ:

      - Blocks my ability to make a standard RAS connection with my cell phone "modem" (built in feature of the phone) mandating that I use the outrageously priced mLife GPRS data carrier (about $40.00 for 20MB of transfers per month).

      - Blocks my ability to restrict dialing of numbers (built into most SIMs at no extra charge but disabled on my AT&T phone)

      - Blocks my ability to use the "call costs" feature of my Nokia cell phone so I know how much my calls are actually costing me

      Now all of those features were built into the phone (and disabled by AT&T), but what about features that need to be provided on the carrier side?

      - There's no carrier provided cost of call during the call (mandatory on German phones)

      - Thereâ(TM)s no ability to meter usage (unless you buy the massively expensive "pay as you go" plans)

      - Thereâ(TM)s no ability to restrict usage to only a few incoming/outgoing numbers for your kids' phones (the cell phone provided features don't work properly if caller ID is turned off) so itâ(TM)s painfully easy for your kids to go over their monthly minutes.

      If these people wonâ(TM)t provide us service that serves us then they need laws to force it out of them. The number portability rule is not only a good one, but long overdue. The fact that theyâ(TM)re lobbying to screw us out of this feature for the sole purpose of lining their pockets at our inconvenience should be swatted down faster than fast.

      TW

    • Associated Cost (Score:3, Insightful)

      by qtp ( 461286 )
      Costs Associated with Implementing Portable Numbers, by percent:

      10% Tecnical Implementation
      90% Lost Business

      In other words, "our business model is threatened by new technology, lets lobby to have our business model mandated by law."

      Prior Art:

      MPAA [mpaa.org]
      RIAA [riaa.org]
      Microsoft [microsoft.com]

      "Or maybe we should sue someone."

      Prior Art:

      SCO [sco.com]

      Anyone see a trend in the corporate culture?

      • Re:Associated Cost (Score:2, Insightful)

        by typobox43 ( 677545 )
        On the other hand, that lost business has to go somewhere. As in, to the other companies. So it follows that since all of the companies are losing business over this, they will all get it back, just as different customers... in other words, this is really offset by everyone who will be leaving their other providers.
  • It doesn't appear to be tecnically challenging to allow numbers to remain the same. Change an entry in a database and there you go. This will increase competition, not decrease it.

    • Re:It's about time (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gfody ( 514448 ) * on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:05PM (#6136102)
      they probably did something really stupid - like using phonenumber as the primary key.

      ever notice on your bill how your account number is your phone number?
      • i'm not going to argue with you on how stupid it is to use the phone number as the primary key (i know it is). but this wouldn't make the number portability harder would it? either you leave verison and go to a new service and keep your number, so all they need is a

        delete * from all_the_tables where phone_number=123-456-7890

        or you come to verizon with your own phone number and all they have to do is

        insert new_user_info into customer_tables

        so my guess is that they'd rather not have the added c
      • they probably did something really stupid - like using phonenumber as the primary key.

        ever notice on your bill how your account number is your phone number?

        I'm with Verizon and my account number is not my phone number...in fact it is not any number I recognize. It's 9 digits plus a dash plus another 5 digits (which are 00001 so I suspect that part is for multiple phones in the same family or something)

    • Re:It's about time (Score:4, Informative)

      by mugnyte ( 203225 ) * on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:41PM (#6136290) Journal
      getting a new phone number is already easy. this isn't what they are complaining about. the block system is what providers use. they acquire a block of numbers and put them in their pool. when in a provider, you choose from their pool.

      within a provider, they have legacy systems that restricts phone number by "exchange" or the 3 digits past "area code". they used to signify geographic domains about 30 years ago. cellulars are out of this realm, but the same code applies at some point - with a nice hack i'd like to see.

      blocks are constantly bought and sold. their systems now, i'm guessing, rarely sell blocks back. but now they'll have to build a list of "numbers for transfer" and the destination provider when a number has to leave the pool for delivery not the government authority, but another provider.

      addionally, these transfers are probably batch legacy jobs, and the schedules of those jobs has to be examined to help a customer's switch with a day or so.

      overall, they'll probably get out of most of these backflips by explaining there's some outrageous surcharge and a messy wait (like "5-10 business days"). customers would rather just call mom and say "ma, i have a new phone number"

      mug

    • Re:It's about time (Score:3, Interesting)

      by usmcpanzer ( 538447 )
      It doesn't appear to be tecnically challenging to allow numbers to remain the same. Change an entry in a database and there you go. This will increase competition, not decrease it.
      1. Wrong, the way AT&T sees it, it will be a huge mess. First off, each comapany ownes their exchange of numbers (ie: xxx-287-xxxx). The solution so far provided esentially is forwarding calls from that number to whatever your new company gives you. Huge headaches if you think about what happens if you switch 2 or more tim
    • Are you saying that there is a centralized cellular database though? I'm no expert on these issues, but it would seem like each cellular company (Cingular, Verizon, etc) has there own database of numbers. If I moved from Cingular to Verizon, Cingular would have to remove my entry from their database and add mine to Verizon's. The cell phone companies would have to create a central database or a procedure for transferring. I don't think it's as simple as you think.

  • Yeah, huh. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jspoon ( 585173 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:00PM (#6136078)
    "Checking the Court's Opinion site every day has paid off."

    Thank god you checked it every day, otherwise this would never have happened.

  • SPAM (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:03PM (#6136088)
    Yes, now I can keep getting the same spam calls forever, even when I change companies.

    • Re:SPAM (Score:2, Insightful)

      by sunilonline ( 609351 )
      Who said you had to keep the same number.. It's not like the law says you can only have one cell phone - if all else fails, start a new number before you cancel the old one!

  • I'm confused... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bull999999 ( 652264 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:03PM (#6136093) Journal
    At first, Verizon was protecting the rights of the consumers by fighting RIAA but now they are going against the consumers by fighting a law backed my congress that was against the consumers by helping RIAA expect recently introduced a bill by a senator to help the consumers...

    • Re:I'm confused... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by XorNand ( 517466 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:13PM (#6136147)

      Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.
      If you think they have any interest in "protecting the rights of consumers", boy do I have deal for you on some Packard-Bell desktops.

      • bad ethics is bad business. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by twitter ( 104583 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:27PM (#6136213) Homepage Journal
        Verizon is a public corporation. It answers to its shareholders, who's only concern is profit.

        That's a poor excuse for unethical behavior and it does not lead to profits. When you see reasoning like that, sell out, quit and don't buy what they are selling. Someone else will do it better eventually.

        A company has obligations to it's shareholders, it's customers and it's employees. Any company that decides to screw one of those three interests for the others will get around to screwing everyone. When you think it's OK to screw people, you screw everyone.

        Anti competitive behavior screws all three interests at the same time. It screws the share holder by driving out other legitimate investments. It screws the customer by monopoly rents. It screws the employees by destroying competitive employers. Anti competitive behavior also leads to stagnation, which screws all three intersts again by blocking legitimate industry growth.

        • I agree with you in princple. Public corporations are legally considered "persons" in many of the same ways as a flesh and blood human. I personally beleive that the invention of the public corporation to be one the most dangerous "advances" this society has ever produced.

          Most public corps are owened by thousands upon thousands of different people. The only thing that these owners have in common is the desire to see their investment earn a profit. They are not part of the company culture and do not consider

        • A company has obligations to it's shareholders, it's customers and it's employees. Any company that decides to screw one of those three interests for the others will get around to screwing everyone. When you think it's OK to screw people, you screw everyone.

          First, a company has obligations to it's shareholders, period. You can say they should have obligations to the others, and that it may ultimately hurt them to disregard the others, but bottom-line, a corporation's job is to make money and obey the law.

        • I agree that bad ethics is morally bad business, but there appears to be no significant correlation between what is morally good and what turns a profit. Make no mistake: if opportunity and the legal climate allowed a public company to corner the market on oxygen and gouge you and everyone else on the planet for every penny you were worth until your last gasping breath, they would do it. The only role that morality would play would be if the appearance of immorality would somehow reduce the company's prof
      • Last time I checked, shareholders are consumers, too. And I'm pretty sure that many of them own cell phones as well.
    • They were not directly fighting for consumers with the RIAA. Some consumers would benefit but Verizon would benefit more. They did not want a precedent set where they would be responsible for the proper disclosure and required by law to respond to every Tom, Dick and Hillary that claimed a copyright violation by one of there users. They want a court to be involved to limit their liability from the customer and the requesting party.
    • If you think that's confusing, just wait for your head to spin when you consider that this FCC that's helping us out here is the same FCC currently headed by Michael "Evil Spawn of Satan and Corporate America" Powell. You know, the one blithely removing rules about media consolidation so that your only news outlets will by owned by AOLCNNTimeDisneyWarnerMSurdochNBC (ok, NPR and OSDN might still exist, but you know, if a tree falls in the woods...)

  • Are lobbyists cheap? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dspyder ( 563303 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:08PM (#6136122)
    For the amount of money the cellphone companies have collectively spent on lobbying and fighting court battles, they could have hired a bunch of the out-of-work slashdotters and solved teh problem once and for all.

    Oh, it's not _truly_ a technology problem? :)

    --D

  • Odd. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:08PM (#6136124) Journal
    I want phone number portability so that I can switch from Cingular's towers to Verizon's. Verizon has much, much better customer support and reception where I live. Don't they think they're going to win here?

    Of course, they're also much more expensive, but...
    • Not really.

      If two companies are competing with each other, anything that creates a percentage of people to switch favors the smaller company.

      For example, if Cingular loses 5% of their audience to Verizon, and Verizon loses 5% of their audience to Cingular, who comes out ahead?
      • Actually in cellular anything that favors customer mobility is a bad thing with the current model. Notice how you normally have to sign a one or two year contract when signing up for those good deals? That's because a lot of the costs are frontloaded for the vendor, from processing to advertising to phone subsidizing, etc. My dad had received some horrible service from frontline people and had tons of billing mistakes over the almost two decades he has had cellphones, but once he reaches a certain level he
        • Almost anyone that paid thier bill on time when under contract will be offered some type of deal if you call and get transferred to the retention department. Each carrier has thier common perks but updated phones and more minutes are very popular.
          Google groups can give you an overview [google.com] but if you have some time to kill, it does not hurt to frequent alt.cellular.verizon and alt.cellular.sprintpcs on a regular basis.

  • charge for it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dirvish ( 574948 ) <dirvish@@@foundnews...com> on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:10PM (#6136139) Homepage Journal
    Why doesn't Verizon just charge a number portability fee like the land-line phone companies do? Is the FCC or the courts stopping them? If there only argument against portability is cost why don't they pass the cost off to the customers? Then Cingular can capatalize on it w/ a No Portability Charge ad campaign since they seem to be in favor of protability. Works for everyone...except maybe customers.
    • The last 5 phone companies I've dealt with (one cellular) have included a number portability fee. AFAICR, I've been paying for this service for YEARS. I didn't know it wasn't working.

      That makes me pretty unhappy.

  • You wanna know what really happened? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bigmase521 ( 612670 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:12PM (#6136142) Homepage
    I put in a call to James Earl Jones. His personal assistant forwarded the message and he took time out of his busy break-dancing schedule to call me back.

    James (in signature voice): What's up bud?

    Me: Big Jimbo, you know this mess w/ Verizon trying to stop Cell Number portability? Is there anything ya can do about that?

    James: oh ho ho ho, Let me see what I can do my friend.

    Me: Well since we're on the subject, see what you can do about that "can you hear me now?" dude will ya?

    James: I'm only one man guy. One very famous, very well-respected, Toni Award-winning man *pauses* On second thought, let me see what I can do about that guy too, I just saw him on a commercial for the 132nd time today. I'll get back to ya.

    One down, one to go! Jimbo's clutch :)

  • Number Hogging (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sunilonline ( 609351 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:14PM (#6136154)
    Why did the US decide to keep it so that cell phones shared numbers with landline area codes, unlike other countries, such as India, who have dedicated cell area codes? It is so impractical because cell phone numbers are constantly changing, whereas landline numbers are not. Even with this new law, people still move around, and wouldn't mind keeping the same cell number, esp. when they have a billion minutes...

    • Re:Number Hogging (Score:3, Informative)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      Cell phones (AMPS) were introduced before the explosion in area codes. Local calls were dialed with 7 digits in most places. You only needed to dial an area code if it was a toll (long distance) call. The existing mobile telephone service (non-cellular) used regular 7 digit phone numbers. It was much simpler to just allocate some new exchanges in the existing area codes for the new cellular services. Airtime charges for mobile phone service (pre-cellular, AMPS, TDMA/GSM/CDMA) have always been charged to the

      • Re:Number Hogging (Score:3, Insightful)

        by steve_l ( 109732 )
        This may have been the original plan, but look at it now: the cellphone vendors get to charge extra roaming/long distance fees when you use your phone outside the 'home area', and double charge on intra-network calls. That and the round up to the next minute plan all brings in bonus $.

        I am so looking forward to getting a decent phone and decent service when I return to europe.
        -steve
    • Because we already had to break a previous rule that said that the middle digit of an area code has to be a 0 or 1, and we're already well along the way to maxing out all of the possible 3 digit area codes available.

      In addition, cell phone numbers do have a "handoff" location associated with the first 6 digits of their number (area code + exchange code) and landline carriers bill callers a toll charge to reach a distant handoff point even if the cell phone itself is next to the caller. What this means is t

  • some problems (Score:2, Informative)

    by afidel ( 530433 )
    Although this problem is somewhat mitigated by the national do not call register.... cellular numbers are given from blocks owned by the cellphone providers and because numbers are not portable between landlines and portables it is easy for telemarketers to filter out the cellular banks from their call lists due to laws forbiding calls to cellular phones due to the reveiver pays nature of US cellular. This FCC ruling makes it so that this will no longer be possible and so telemarketers will be able to call

  • People worry too much. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Zaphod B ( 94313 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:17PM (#6136173) Journal
    I don't get why everyone thinks this is going to be such an issue - on either side. Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.

    Two things to note, which I have said before:

    Local Number Portability (LNP - the wireline equivalent to WNP) has about a 30% failure rate according to agencies such as PUCO (Ohio's regulatory body) and the CPUC (California's regulatory body). Essentially, what happens is that the port does not work, and in most cases, rather than wait for the local telcos to get their ducksinaro, people just accept a new telephone number, one from the pool of numbers assigned to their new telco. I don't foresee this ratio being any better with WNP.

    Local Exchanges - Surely you have noticed by now that a carrier normally does not have numbers in each rate centre in an area code. T-Mobile, for example, have numbers in the 310 area code only in Gardena and Santa Monica. If WNP follows the lead of LNP, the only requirement is that they port your existing number IF YOU ARE IN THE SAME RATE CENTRE. If you have a Cingular telephone in the Mar Vista rate centre, or an AT&T phone in the Beverly Hills rate centre, and you skip to T-Mobile, I assume your old provider would not be required to port your old number.

    Finally, nowhere does it say that WNP is required to be a FREE service. I could see them charging your new company a fee for the service, and there is no doubt in my mind that the cost will be passed directly to the consumer.
    • Barring an initial flurry of churn, I think the churn rate will settle to slightly above where it is now.

      That's the rational thing to believe -- unless of course you believe you are the worst of all the wireless carriers.

      Maybe even more than one of the wireless carriers believes this. But of course, only one of them is right. :)
    • I can't believe there are any physical components involved in a modern wireless phone network. Ports that consist of entries in a database/routing table don't fail.
  • Argued April 15, 2003 Decided June 6, 2003

    I'd like for my story submissions to be accepted as much as the next guy, but checking every day for almost two months seems a little excessive...

  • Verizon is always complaining. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bleh-of-the-huns ( 17740 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:21PM (#6136192)
    What is up with verizon, they complain about everything, they lobby'd to get deregulated, promising that if that happened they would provide data services to homes, that happened, and Verizon backed out of that and refuse to push out data services. Now they are bitching about number portability... Odds are this has nothing to do with cost, the only reason is because if they did enable it, most of their customers would jump ship, because their pricing, and customer service is the worst, of anything, cell provider, phone provider, data services, they are always rated the worst.

    Its time someone bitch slapped Verizon. They are only fighting for their own survival, and still raking in the money for poor services.

  • information about the law (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ih8apple ( 607271 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:22PM (#6136194)
    The law has been on the books since 1996 and was supposed to take effect no later than 1999, but the FCC has deferred implementation repeatedly for years. However, the FCC has said repeatededly that they will not defer implementation again and I'm becoming more optimistic that number portability will actually become real in Nov. (Rather than renewing my contract with AT&T (for another free new phone) as I've done for 4 years just to keep the same number, I'm holding off till Nov or till I hear that the law is deferred again. If the FCC doesn't defer again, GOODBYE AT&T!!!!!)

    Another important point is that the cell phone companies have been adding fees for a couple of years now with the excuse to the FCC being "upgrading their systems" to support portability. They can't have it both ways, asking us to pay fees to support portability and then not give us portability.

  • Portable numbers? How about a DNS-like system? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by possible ( 123857 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:23PM (#6136199)
    While I agree with the ruling, it would be nice to have a DNS-like system for telephone numbers. Map names to numbers, allow the numbers to change while the name stays the same.
    • Yes, operator, I would like to speak to William Smith in NY, NY.

      Sorry, I dont think that idea would work. Too many mixups possible. Besides, have you ever had to change your number to prevent people from calling you? Admit it, its nice when you change your number and the "undesirables" somehow don't end up with your new number. This would seem to be a circumvention for that. (remember accordign to the above idea, the number can change, just not the name)

      • In my post I specifically said "a DNS-like system". In your response you described a system that works nothing like DNS, so let me clue you in.

        DNS works by using hierarchical mnemonic names with uniqueness enforced by a registry. It allows you to map these UNIQUE names to IP addresses. I don't know about you, but when I try to visit a website, I don't type into my browser "I'd like to visit the website of Bill's Soda Company in Wilmington", I type www.billsodaco.com. It works pretty well.
    • Names aren't unique though.

      How about a system where the phone number is "technically" a lot longer. Like, 100 digits. The first 90 digits define the company code, the last 10 are your phone number. You don't ever actually have to dial 10 numbers, but the phone switches pre-pend your 90 digit company code to every call you make. Incoming calls would ask a switch for "*2065551212" and route the call to the result.

      (Doesn't have to be 100 digits, just threw that number out there..)
    • Actually this could work. Instead of mapping a name to a number, map the person's personal number to a actual service number. The service number would, of course, not be confused with the personal number. It would have a different format, be out-of-band, or whatever.
    • This is likley to happen with IP6/packet based phones - but rather than a name it'll be your now virtualised phone number mapping to an IP6 address.

      At least that was how I set it up when working on htis kind of thing at my old dot bomb :o)
    • As others have mentioned, names are not unique. Why not make domains then?

      Foo-Bar@NY.NY#verizon.phone

      Personally, I think the idea has the same problems that cause most people to not list their phone #. AND the problems that DNS has [collisions]. AND it would require the phone companies to admin a DNS-esque server; Verizon can't even keep a T1 working for more than a month.

      • How many people's email addresses do you actually remember? I remember most of my friends addresses, but then I also remember most of their phone numbers as well. The majority of people are not like that. They use a machine (or in more primitive areas a paper address book) to map people's names to numbers / email addresses. When they make a call on a mobile, they select the person's name from their address book. Ditto when they send an email. Whether the underlying address is alphabetical or numerical
      • Because the point of "number portablity" is to have a number that stays with you as you change providers. I think it would get confusing to have to remap Foo-Bar@NY.NY#verizon.phone to Cingular...

  • No wonder Cingular is happy (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:31PM (#6136231)
    "But it was also nice to see Cingular was on the FCC's side of the case."

    That's because they're the underdogs. No kidding they're thrilled- now all those Verizon, AT&T, etc customers have the capability to switch to them. It's already pretty easy to switch off Cingular- they don't lock you into a contract. I would imagine that Nextel stands to loose quite a bit here too, with a large # of business customers(my thought being that business people are less likely to switch #'s) and rather high pricing(though more reasonable recently.)

    Frankly, I just wish Cingular would pick a name. They've switched names more than I've switched carriers- Omnipoint->Voicestream->Cingular...arrg.

    • You're joking, right?

      1. Cingular have contracts, except on KiC (Keep in Contact) prepaid. Prepaid wireless NEVER has a contract.

      2. Omnipoint -> Voicestream -> T-Mobile.

      3. Nextel are immensely popular amoung businesses. They cater almost exclusively to businesses (their prepaid Boost Mobile division notwithstanding). Most people who have Nextels, though I hate to admit it because I loathe that "chirp" sound, are soundly in love with their push-to-talk Direct Connect figure.

      Come to http://www.wir
    • Omnipoint->Voicestream->Cingular...arrg.

      Dunno where you live, but in this country, Voicestream became T-Mobile.


  • Glad to see that rationality won out here! All we are talking about is having the facility to deactivate a number on one network and forward it to another network. We are talking about being able to perform a database update, had a packet to another system, and perform another database update. This isn't rocket science. Yes, it is work and will be critical to get it right, but the overall investment should be relatively small. That plus that fact we have been paying for it (check your cell phone bill).



    The judge was right, the carriers waited way too long to protest. Now they have to do it or face penalities. I am waiting for November and then it is goodbye Cingular and hello T-Mobile for my Treo (can you say GPRS, world-wide coverage that will let me easily and cheaply use my phone in India and Germany?)! I was waiting for this to happen, because I couldn't/wouldn't give up my number. But every month I cursed Cingular under my breath. I will be first in line to move!

  • Reason Why (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @07:46PM (#6136306)
    The problem has nothing to do with the techinical aspect of it.
    But the fact that most people hate changing numbers; and Verizon has 1/3 of all the cell phone customers out there. Basicly they have a huge customer base that would like to try out one of the other carriers, but It is too much hassle.
    Plus most of the remaining 2/3's don't have good enough credit for verizon.

    For all the other carriers it would be great if they could try and take business away from verizon.
  • I could care less about number porting, what I do care is AT&T Wireless charges me $1.25 a month so my number can be ported. What crap, I already have to pay enough in taxes.

  • Rights (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jack Comics ( 631233 ) * <jack_comics@post ... Nrg minus author> on Friday June 06, 2003 @08:00PM (#6136361) Homepage
    And exactly *where* in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed the right of keeping our mobile telephone number forever? I don't see the big deal here. People have changed telephone numbers for the past one hundred years, and society as we know it has moved along just fine.

    People keep thinking they're entitled to more and more when they're only entitled to three basic fundamental things: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Nothing more, nothing less.
    • The purpose of the Constitution and Bill of Rights is not to enumerate all of the rights you have.

      Without any laws, you have the right to do whatever you want. Laws are created to restrict your rights. The Constitution and it's ammendments purpose is to draw a line in the sand that the law cannot cross.

    • Re:Rights (Score:3, Informative)

      by LMariachi ( 86077 )
      Amendment IX

      The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

      Amendment X

      The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

    • Re:Rights (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 )
      And exactly *where* in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are we guaranteed the right of keeping our mobile telephone number forever?

      Where in the Constitution and/or Bill of Rights are corporations guaranteed the rights to keeping contiguous chunks of mobile telephone numbers forever?

  • Generally, I see two issues... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mixy1plik ( 113553 ) * <mhunt@@@ecin...net> on Friday June 06, 2003 @08:30PM (#6136445)
    Wireless adoption has, to be sure, grown in leaps and bounds over the last few years. I remember my first cell phone at the end of '97. I was headed off to college and I picked up a Nokia 252 (Verizon Wireless, in VT). Aside from the general lack of good deals on plans it was still a relatively new deal for most people. Seeing what you get now it quite impressive in comparison, but it's crazy you're so locked with one provider.

    The two issues I think are number portability as well as the fundamental fact that you still pay for incoming calls. The wireless industry has claimed essentially we don't want it, which is quite silly. I'm glad the FCC won this time, because I'm somewhat unhappy with my current carrier. Since switching to digital at the beginning of '99, I have kept the same number. I want to move to another carrier but, like many, I have an established number that I want to keep. Use an online voicemail service as my home number and it's great not getting solicitors waking me up at 7am. Switching to a provider with better coverage in my area will make my life so much easier- and I keep my number!

  • easy number portability (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kwiqsilver ( 585008 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @08:39PM (#6136480)
    Wouldn't it be easy to provide number portability if phone numbers were more of an alias?
    If we had an equivalent to DNS for phones, you could have some character string represent your phone, the equivalent of an IP address represent the service contract you have with your provider, and the hardware address represent that particular piece of hardware.
    Switching providers while retaining your number (and even your phone if they use the same protocols) would be as easy as switching slashdot.org's internet provider.

  • In the meantime... (Score:3, Informative)

    by hardeight ( 304616 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @08:58PM (#6136545)
    you can use forwardportal.com to forward your number.
    It's fairly new, i think, but some of my friends have listed in it.

    (thought I'd put this again at the top)

  • We can do something to stop this... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Markmarkmark ( 512275 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @09:47PM (#6136698) Homepage
    Here is the contact info for the two representatives mentioned in the article as possibly favoring an extension. It sounds like they are floating a trial balloon to see if they can get away with supporting another extension (and hence get a nice campaign contribution from the Celcos). Getting a flood of responses right now can make a big difference. Send them a fax or letter, it works much, much better than emails. Below is the letter I'm sending but drafting your own comments is best. /.ers have never had trouble expressing themselves :)

    Representative Fred Upton
    2161 Rayburn House Office Building
    Washington, D.C. 20515
    202 225-3761
    202 225-2986 fax

    John Shimkus
    513 Cannon House Office Building
    Washington, DC 20515
    Phone: (202) 225-5271
    Fax: (202) 225-5880

    Dear Representative Upton,

    I read with dismay and considerable disbelief your comments regarding the possibility of extending, yet again, cellular number portability. As you know, this has been mandated since 1996 and extended three times since 1999. To even consider another extension as sought by the largest cellular providers is simply ludicrous. Your constituents have been waiting, and waiting and waiting for years as the cellular companies have trotted out increasingly creative excuses to maintain this anti-competitive and illegitimate hold on consumers. Granting another extension on top of all the others goes against the interest of voting consumers and does not pass even the most basic âoesmellâ test.

    Implementing number portability will not divert funds from other projects as claimed because the cellular companies can charge for this new service. In fact, they will make money by offering portability, just not as much as they are now making by extracting over-market prices from customers who are having their phone number held hostage. Everyone from the FCC, the courts, the media, analysts and even Congress itself, agree that consumers will get better value and service in a frictionless free market. To perpetuate this sitation, is to artificially prevent a cellular company that provides better value and service from gaining the customers it deserves. This has the effect of sheltering the larger players from competition while removing incentives for investment, innovation and excellence. It is interesting that some cellular companies want further extensions and some do not. Now that the FCC and courts will no longer entertain their increasingly fantastic arguments, they are seeking to legislate the unfair competitive advantage they cannot maintain any other way. The massive funds already spent by the celcos lobbying to continue holding consumers hostage would be more wisely invested in better service so their customers won't be so desperate to escape.

    This issue has grown increasingly high profile. Each extension has focused more eyes on the actions of everyone involved. It is now a common topic of discussion among your constituents, who are expecting to finally enjoy the relief that has been promised yet delayed for so long.

  • Lies, lies, lies, yeah!! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 06, 2003 @09:58PM (#6136727)
    They are already portable. My girlfriend works at a certain 3-letter telecommunications company striving back towards profitability, and wireless carriers have been LNP (local number portability) capable since November 2002. This is when they started donating number blocks on a voluntary basis (used to be in counts of 10,000, but is now in counts of 1000) to the number pool. All carriers (who have needed them) have received wireless numbers from the pool, and have donated them into the number pool when necessary. Pooling has been going on since 1998 on a voluntary basis (and is impossible unless the number is LNP-capable), this means that all the carriers basically put the numbers in a pool (very inventive name, eh?) and take them as they need them. And yes, number porting can be done while the number is "live", or already assigned to someone.

    They are stalling because they're worried they'll lose customers due to bad service. Hmm, wonder why that is??? ;-)

  • If your like me.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by craigtay ( 638170 ) on Friday June 06, 2003 @11:58PM (#6137177) Journal
    You switched cell phones specifically to get a new phone number. Stupid restraining orders..

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