Happy Cell Phone Portability Day

The cell companies have been fighting and delaying this day for a long time but on November 24 the FCC’s number portability legislation took effect. At 2pm I walked into the downtown Philadelphia Verizon Wireless shop and signed up. By 6pm my cell phone should be switched over from SprintPCS.

The telecommunication industry’s resistance to number portability has been the culprit behind the ever-multiplying area codes throughout North America. We’re usually told it’s everyone’s cellphones and fax numbers, but the really problem has been in the allocation of telephone numbers for new phone companies.

If a new phone company wanted to offer service in a particular geographic area, the company would be assigned a full exchange (the first three digits of your phone number). The numbers in this exchange could only be used by this company in this small area. There are 10,000 numbers available per exchange (e.g., 635-0000 to 635-9999) and every rinky-dink phone company with even one number in an exchange would be assigned these 10,000 numbers. Each area code quickly runs out of exchanges in this situation, prompting a new area code even though there can be hundreds of thousands of unused phone numbers.

All the millions of dollars wasted on new stationary, all the incompleted calls and all the reprogramming of phone numbers are the result of allocating one exchange per phone company per geographic area. With portability we can mix phone companies and exchanges. People can switch phone providers and keep their phone number and not affect the pressure to split off a new area code. Today we can switch cell phone providers without switching numbers. Soon we’ll be able to switch our “land line” phone numbers onto cell phone plans. It’s all long overdue.