Publication Type: Talking Points
Date: 7/24/2008
Quick and easy porting of phone numbers is essential to the development of competition for phone services.
- The need to port numbers makes the voice market different from all other markets. There is no other service where a new provider must wait for a customer to be released by its old provider before it may begin service.
- Congress wisely recognized that competition is best served when customers can keep a phone number when they switch providers; and that rule applies to all carriers, not just incumbents.
- Competition and consumers are best served when switching phone providers is no more difficult than it is for other services.
- For video and broadband services, there is no waiting period at all when a customer decides to switch providers.
- For wireless voice services, carriers are able to port the number in 2½ hours.
Giant phone company opposition to a shorter porting interval is unjustified and harms consumers.
- The current porting interval permits a phone provider up to 4 business days to port a number. Far from being an onerous regulation, the porting interval is best viewed as a practical response that ensures a reasonable period of time for the old provider to release a number to the new provider. In 2008, however, there is no technological justification for making a new provider wait at least 4 days after a customer signs up for service for the number to be released.
- Wireless carriers, including AT&T and Verizon, are able to port numbers in a matter of hours. A reasonable step forward for wireline providers would be to reduce that interval from 4 days to 2 days.
- Updating and automating back office equipment and procedures is a constant part of every business. The largest phone companies in America should not be permitted to keep the number porting process walled off from advances in technology.
While consumers would benefit from a shorter porting interval, it is appropriate to take into account any unique challenges confronting rural phone companies.
- All consumers, including rural consumers, benefit from quick and easy porting.
- However, the FCC should consider challenges facing very small rural carriers through delayed implementation of any new rules or adoption of a slightly longer porting interval.