Cellphone Number Portability -- A Big Lie? 108
juuri asks: "Having spoken to a few friends it seems like troubles with cell phone portability here in the States is rampant. However today I ran into a new problem, it seems numbers aren't really portable if you move. For example if one has an LA number and moves to a different region (which vary greatly from carrier to carrier) you can not move your number with you if you switch to a new carrier such as Cingular or T-Mobile. Why not? You obviously already have the number and with nationwide roaming plans there is no reason for such distinctions. Even more alarming is that your new regional arm of your carrier may give you much trouble over your previous contract and basically refuse to give you service unless you sign up for a new, local region one. Does anyone know of a cell provider that lets you move your number, regardless of region?" It seems that the latest new thing for cellphones has turned into more of a flop, than a feature. Has anyone else run into this problem? Were you able to keep your number, or were you forced to change it?
the deal on porting (Score:5, Informative)
The numbers are still linked, geographically, to a specific place.
The carrier where you are going to at the very least, needs to have a presence geographically within the same market that your phone number came out of. I'm not sure how it works internally, but I'd be willing to lay odds that at least some carriers are unable to take a number from one area, and transfer it to another -- like they won't activate a phone for a customer that lives outside their presence area - they can't take a phone number from outside their presence area.
In THEORY, however, as long as both carriers have a presence in the same geographic telephone LEC, then they should be able to port.. they may have to set it up under your old address, then change the billing address.. but it could be done. If they don't have presence in the old location though, it ain't gonna happen.
Number portability isn't done! (Score:5, Informative)
As for the posters argument that there should be no problem since you are going from one provider's nationwide plan to another, there is no such thing as "Free long distance" or "Free Roaming", someone has to pay for the towers, radios, switches, and the fiber connecting them. Your provider is constantly analyzing if they can turn a profit on the average user, with average usage per month, at whatever price point we're talking about. The trucker on a $100/month nationwide plan that uses $110 of service will be ballanced out by that persone who buys a 400 minute anytime plan for 40 a month but never leaves your towers/fiber ring/switches.
IIRC (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:2, Informative)
Cingular gives you commercials strangely reminiscent of Apple's "Switch" campaign, except with hot girls.
Re:the deal on porting (Score:4, Informative)
3 Months and port isn't complete (Score:3, Informative)
So far it's been 3 months and I've made more than 25 phone calls to Verizon - and still the number is not ported. To make matters even better the landline carrier, Frontier Telephone of Rochester disconnected my number today. I immediately called Verizon (yes, Verizon) about this. They tried to get a conference call to Frontier but Frontier was closed for the day.
Can someone please tell me what to do? I filed a complaint with the FCC a week or two ago. I tried contacted a local TV news source but they didn't want to help me (or couldn't). I also left a message with the NYS attorney general tonight. I really don't know who to contact.
I switched to Verizon because I was unhappy with Frontier and it wouldn't cost much more to use Verizon and have 2 phones with many more features than my landline carrier. Instead I'm faced with 3 months of phone calls to Verizon and Frontier and both companies pointing the finger at each other (and me wanting to point the finger at both).
Verizons customer support has been very friendly and seemingly helpful but the fact of the matter is that after 25 calls and 3 months time the number still isn't ported.
When I call Frontier they promptly tell me that I should be dealing with Verizon - not them. Their reps are typically very rude. A while back I was lucky enough to get a nice rep who put me in touch with her supervisor. Her supervisor was nice and contacted their porting department (which I can't contact). He said their porting department wouldn't tell him why, but that Verizon wasn't giving them the information they needed to port the number.
To the best of my knowledge Verizon has sent at least 4 port requests. 3 have been ignored and one was denied.
I almost forgot! We were never offered a temp number for the wireless phone so we can only make outgoing calls on it. This has been a major hassle.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post but I am extremely upset...
Greg
Re:Just did it today (Score:1, Informative)
I ported my Verison number to my family plan on sprint to take advantage of free mobil to moble calling (The rest of my family uses Sprint). My family lives in MD I live in CA my father works in GA. Everything went fine. Also a note, I got my number ported at a MD sprint location. So we have 1 phone that is used in MD and billed in MD. One that is used in GA and billed to MD and one that was transfrerd from Verizon, used in CA and billed to MD. It took 5 days to transfer the number but I was able to use my old carrier in the mean time.
Re:the deal on porting (Score:2, Informative)
I tried several times to get a local (or atleast in state) number. Every time I called they refused to give me a number. I could not get a Lincoln number because they dont have local coverage. I could not get a Omaha number because I did not live in Omaha (where they do have coverage).
Finaly, I added a second phone to my plan at an Omaha store and they "made" me get a local "Omaha" number.
Hey, atleast it is in the state.
Re:3 Months and port isn't complete (Score:2, Informative)
In other words, go right to the top - contact the Verizon CEO.
Why's this a issue? (Score:3, Informative)
If you want it to be a local number for where you're moving to then yes you'll have to change your number. The current switching network used worldwide Landline/Wireless will not allow what you're asking to be done. It would be chaos. Until all the SS7 traffic is converted into some sort of IP based system then it might be possible but until then I'd say try verizon wireless. They have a ez move program.
Re:3 Months and port isn't complete (Score:2, Informative)
Number "Portability" (Score:2, Informative)
That's not to say that isn't possible, and I've heard several stories of people who have moved and kept their number. I think that is totally up to the carrier in question and their infrastructure and billing systems. I do not think this was an FCC-mandated feature.
To be honest, I'm surprised the FCC allows it.
You can read more about number portability, success and horror stories, provider discussions, and cell phone capabilities over at Howard Forums [howardforums.com]. Very good, very high traffic. It's like Slashdot for cell phones. =)
Re:the deal on porting (Score:2, Informative)
Re:the deal on porting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the REAL deal on porting (Score:2, Informative)
A VERY Short Explanation from an LNP Engineer-- (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
No. Among other things, it indicates the possibility that you may be dialing a number that will include a long-distance company identifier -- for example, 10-10-220-303-555-1212. The dialing plan in the US carries an enormous amount of historical baggage. Choosing a long-distance carrier, as well as the additions to the dialing plan to allow you to specify the carrier on a per-call basis, were added in 1984 when the Bell System was broken up. I don't believe the cell-phone companies are required to allow you to specify the long-distance carrier. Given the number of plans that don't make any distinction between local and long-distance, it seems unlikely that you would ever want to specify a different carrier.
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Informative)
Correct. There are currently [prodial.com] no area codes that start with 1. There are plans in progress [wikipedia.org] to add an 11th and possibly 12th digit to the North American numbering plan by 2030. If I live that long I'll be 77, and probably find it to be incredibly confusing. They may be optimistic about needing those extra digits, of course, since there's a chance that most useful devices will reside on IP-based networks by that time.