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Wireless Carriers Argue Against Number Portability
from the kicking-and-screaming dept
It appears that the wireless carriers are going to be dragged, kicking and screaming all the way, towards number portability. Yesterday (over on Techdirt Wireless - Techdirt's news blog focused only on wireless news), we were talking about how the wireless carriers were demanding that wireline carriers be held to the same rules, allowing landline number to be transferred over to wireless plans. At the same time, they're still trying to stop number portability from happening at all in the wireless space. The arguments they make are bordering on ridiculous. They say it offers no consumer benefit and that the wireless industry is "competitive enough". However, if you talk to just about any mobile phone user (myself included) they would point out that being able to switch providers without losing your number is a huge benefit - and would also incent the carriers to finally start improving their service levels. How could more choice not be an overall "benefit" for consumers? It's interesting that Verizon seems to be leading the charge against number portability, since studies have shown they stand to gain the most once it's implemented.
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Number Portability
I left from SBC (PacBell, or PacHell at the time,) and went to another provider, paying a one-time fee and have never been charged a number portability fee since...(at the time, PacHell was charging me a $5.00/mo in-house repair fee because I had spent the money to buy Cat-5 cable and replace all the crappy wires in my 50 year old house with Cat-5, and they wouldn't let me discontinue this service.) My phone bill for SBC was around $50 a month for one line, my phone bill is now $24 a month for two lines, and I've never looked back.
Fortunately SBC's wireless (Cingular) is a little better than SBC's land-line division, and I've had nothing but good things to say about them, compared to "Ver(can you hear us stealing your pocketbook now)izon", and would love to see people have the opportunity of switching from Verizon to another provider.
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