Court Lets Mobile Phone Numbers Follow Customers
from the as-expected dept
As expected, a US Court of Appeals has sided with the FCC and told the various wireless carriers that they do need to get ready for number portability. The wireless carriers had protested, saying that this was unnecessary and there was plenty of competition in the wireless arena already. That's a pretty weak argument, of course. It's pretty easy to find people who haven't switched their mobile phone service simply because they didn't want to lose their number. What will be more interesting, though, is to see the consequences of this move. The simple fact is that almost all carriers have service-level problems, and as people start to switch, they probably won't be too happy with any carrier they end up with. Then, there's the question of how the carriers will respond. Since much of their business model is based on subsidizing the phone purchase and trying to keep their customers for long periods of time to recoup those costs - I imagine they're going to get a lot more strict about keeping people tied to long term contracts. Sure, if you must switch carriers, you'll be able to, but be prepared to pay a huge "termination" fee.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
I had a Sprint PCS phone for six years--and this month I finally told them to turn it off.
I had horrible service--one of their towers consistantly dropped my calls--and their customer support said "It's probably overloaded" and that was it. No "Ok--we'll get it fixed", or "I'll send someone out to look at the tower or install a new one", just "Sorry--there are probably too many customers trying to use it at the moment".
The only reason I stayed so long was because everyone had that phone number.
If people have the freedom to switch to other carriers and keep their number, I would have left Sprint a few years ago when this problem came up.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Aren't we already paying for this?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Aren't we already paying for this?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
The technology has NOT been available to the U.S. until about 2-3 years ago. While GSM and CDMA equipments support the feature, it was not compatible with how the U.S. used to allocate blocks of phone numbers. So pratically, mobile number portability could not have been realized until 1000-block pooling was implemented in the U.S. (which happened in 1998/1999 I believe).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The man behind the curtain
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
Raise you hand if you've ever moved and had your phone # change.
Was your life ruined?
People, we can't allow this stuff to be Gov't regulated, you're not going to be happy with what it leads to.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
You DOLT!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]