Consumers scored a rare victory last Friday (6 June 2003) as the “US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld the legality of a pending regulation from the Federal Communications Commission, known in the cell phone industry as ‘local number portability.'” Local number portability, to be implemented 24 November 2003, will allow you to switch your cell phone company while retaining your phone number. You won’t need to get new letterhead, business cards or go through the hassle of trying to contact the myriad of people who have your cell phone number.

As I mentioned earlier in my tirade about Sprint PCS, number portability was the main thing refraining me from switching to another carrier. The cell phone companies are against it, because they know that their years of customer disservice is going to now bite them in the ass. While all carriers have their downsides, and alot of switching may just be ‘grass is always greener’ syndrome, giving the consumer the ability to retain their number in a switch may actually improve carrier’s customer service. Perhaps they will now actually be empowered to actively retain existing customers and not just gear any new promotion to new customers.

Verizon is dead-set against number portability. Citing ‘huge costs’ and resource drains away from implementing enhanced 911 tracking (911 operators will be able to use GPS to determine a callers location), the carriers want yet another delay, and now that they have lost in the court they are lobbying Congress. In an amazing testament to campaign contributions, many lawmakers are actually falling for it. Nevermind that this rule was enacted in 1996 and that the carriers have had three delays since the original 1999 deadline; the carriers want to charge you for an implementation and then not implement it. If you look at your cell phone bill you will see a line-item charge for ‘Federal Telephone Number Pooling’ or something similar. Sprint has been charging customers since November 2002. All carriers have the charge and some may have been charging customers longer. Likewise for the enhanced 911 implementation. On my Sprint PCS bill, that line-item charge is ‘E911.’ So the carriers claims of high costs are nonsense, they are just passing the charges onto consumers, and if I’m paying for it, then I damn well want it!