So about the cell phone number portability charge

[sandmanwake]

What exactly is involved that would cost that much money for cell phone companies that they need to pass the charges on to the customers? If you don't care about keeping your old number, you're paying $2-4 each month for nothing. For those who care, why don't the cell companies just have them pay what ever fee is incurred when doing the switch to ensure that the number is kept.

Anyone working for a telephone company know the answers?

 

[Jzero]

They charge it because they can. That's the bottom line.

 

[Kelemvor]

It's probably different between all the carriers. Call one and say you like their deal and you'll switch to them if they are willing to not charge you the fee. Usually they can haggle with you a bit on charges.

 

[rh71]

Was free for me when I ported from Sprint to Verizon in January.

 

[Modeps]

Yeah, I'm getting charged an additional $0.87 every month now because of this crap... and I've been with T-Mobile/Voicestream for the past 3 years.

 

[NutBucket]

It actually cost the carriers a lot to implement WNLP. I do agree the charges are a bit much. I get charged $1.10 a month.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: NutBucket
It actually cost the carriers a lot to implement WNLP. I do agree the charges are a bit much. I get charged $1.10 a month.

I don't buy that for a second. Number portability has been the norm everywhere else in the world for years, and most of the major US carriers are either subsidiaries of European providers (T-Moble!), or have operations in Europe. It's not like this is some hot new technology, the US providers always just banked on the American mentality of assuming that what we have is the best and everyone being oblivious to the fact that in most every other industrialized country in the world, you can actually port your number between carriers.

They opposed this measure and held it up for years because they knew that it was going to step up the already fierce competition and they would actually have to step up to the plate and start providing better service because the PITA factor of switching carriers would be eliminated.

Every other excuse they used was purely an excuse, but in order to cut their losses they compromised with the FCC to be allowed to charge money to their customers if the measure passed, supposedly to cover the expense of changing over, but the truth is:
It's just so they could charge money for something.

 

[Viper GTS]

Originally posted by: Jzero

Originally posted by: NutBucket
It actually cost the carriers a lot to implement WNLP. I do agree the charges are a bit much. I get charged $1.10 a month.

I don't buy that for a second. Number portability has been the norm everywhere else in the world for years, and most of the major US carriers are either subsidiaries of European providers (T-Moble!), or have operations in Europe. It's not like this is some hot new technology, the US providers always just banked on the American mentality of assuming that what we have is the best and everyone being oblivious to the fact that in most every other industrialized country in the world, you can actually port your number between carriers.

They opposed this measure and held it up for years because they knew that it was going to step up the already fierce competition and they would actually have to step up to the plate and start providing better service because the PITA factor of switching carriers would be eliminated.

Every other excuse they used was purely an excuse, but in order to cut their losses they compromised with the FCC to be allowed to charge money to their customers if the measure passed, supposedly to cover the expense of changing over, but the truth is:
It's just so they could charge money for something.

You're a fool, if you had any idea how the cellular system worked you would understand that it is not a small thing.

Imagine if someone tried to force IP portability, what would that do to the internet as we know it?

WNLP is basically the same concept. Cell lines become land lines, land lines become cell lines, & cell lines move between carriers. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare this creates? Especially since every company has their own systems, switches, etc.

I'm all for encouraging competition, but WNLP was stupid. I thought that long before I ever worked for a phone company, now that I'm in training for a phone company I think it's even worse.

Viper GTS

 

[rh71]

Looking at my Verizon bill, I see no such portability charge.

Verizon Charges:
Gross Receipts Surcharge - $1.12/mo.
Fed Universal Service Charge (is this it?) - $0.43/mo.
Regulatory Charge - $0.45/mo.


Taxes/gov't surcharge/fees: ~$5/mo.
County 911 Surcharge
NY State E911 Fee
Federal Tax
NY State Sales Tax
County Sales Tax
NY Local McTd Sales Tax

 

[Kelemvor]

There's no reason to have a monthly fee for that. A 1-time transfer fee I can see, but charging every month? That's dumb. So 10 years later you'd still be paying for it? Nah.

 

[Jzero]

Originally posted by: Viper GTS
WNLP is basically the same concept. Cell lines become land lines, land lines become cell lines, & cell lines move between carriers. Can you imagine the logistical nightmare this creates? Especially since every company has their own systems, switches, etc.

Yet this has been available in Europe since the mid-1990s.

You can't expect me to believe that since the bill was first pushed in 1998 or 1999 that US providers had never even considered the possiblity and didn't start implementing the infrastructure needed.

You also cannot expect me to believe that in the ensuing 2-3 years that the CTIA stalled the deadline that they simply sat on their hands and didn't prepare for the inevitable future.

And, you cannot expect me to believe this considering landline portability had been around for years as well.

Welcome to the new world - a phone number no longer denotes a specific geographic location or wireless handset, it denotes a person.

I'm all for encouraging competition, but WNLP was stupid. I thought that long before I ever worked for a phone company, now that I'm in training for a phone company I think it's even worse.

Riiiiight. It was one of the biggest reasons dissatisfied customers continued to stay with their sh!tty providers.
Hundreds of thousands of people have taken advantage of WNLP inthe past 6 months. That's what you call stupid?

 

[dman]

Think of the MILLIONS of subscribers that are out there, and then think of the $1.xx charge many are charging MONTHLY to enable number portability. Then think of the some high-end mainframes, LAN, WAN (highspeed bandwidth), and throw in some IT staff to support it. Remember this is a monthly charge.

I think they are profiting just a bit from this. We're talking 10-20million charged (minimum) a month to support number portability at each provider. It's a freakin database w/ some fairly sizeable backend costs... but mult-millions a month to run, I don't think so.

That's insane.