Subject: [NEXTEL-1] No rush for cell switch

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:15:51 -0500

No rush for cell switch

Traffic was light on the first day people could change cell providers, but keep
their old numbers.
BY LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO
Pioneer Press

America's newest reality show debuted Monday: You could call it Divorce, Cell
Phone Style. Monday was the first day that new federal rules allowed Americans
to drop their old cell phone carriers but keep their old number, and Brad
Federowski was so eager to dump his Nextel service Monday that he showed up only
10 minutes after the Roseville Verizon Wireless store opened.

The 30-year-old Maplewood man even used to work for Nextel. Now, he was signing
up with Verizon Wireless, an old flame.

"I had been a Verizon (Wireless) customer five years ago, and I was pretty happy
with them," he said.

Thousands of America's 150 million cell phone users were making similar swaps
Monday, and while most analysts believe the amount of dissatisfied consumers
switching services could reach the tens of millions by this time next year,
there appeared to be no mass rush to switch Monday.

"We saw a relatively light volume of people coming into our stores today," said
AT&T Wireless spokesman Chris Comes on Monday. The carrier would not release any
specific numbers.

TSI Telecommunications Services Inc. told Bloomberg News that U.S. cellular
operators were expected to have processed "hundreds of thousands" of phone
number transfers Monday, less than the upwards of 1 million some had expected.
TSI said it is handling transactions for eight of the 10 largest U.S. wireless
carriers.

A spot check of a few Twin Cities stores seemed to confirm the report. The AT&T
Wireless store in Woodbury saw only two requests, store employees said. The
Roseville Verizon store just had a couple requests Monday morning, while its
sister store in Woodbury handled three. The Sprint PCS store in Maplewood had
processed 19 requests by 4 p.m.

The new rules from the Federal Communications Commission also allow consumers to
drop their traditional wire line home phone number and transfer that number to a
cell phone.

Qwest Communications International, the nation's fourth-largest regional phone
company and Minnesota's dominant local service provider with 2.1 million
residential lines, did not notice a major increase in requests Monday,
spokeswoman Cyndi Barrington said.

Still, some consumers, like Alisha Dotson, were looking forward to this day for
weeks.

The 24-year-old Maplewood woman had been waiting since October to revisit her
Sprint PCS store in Maplewood so she could dump her and her boyfriend's T-Mobile
service and sign them up with Sprint PCS.

"I've switched carriers over the last few years many times, and I have had to
switch phone numbers many times," Dotson said.

"I've probably lost contact with some people because of that."

While the FCC and an industry trade group asked the carriers to complete the
transfers of numbers within 2½ hours, most carriers had said it would likely
take longer — a day or even longer in some difficult cases.

At the Maplewood Sprint store, for instance, Dotson was told her number wouldn't
be active until Saturday.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/7342600.htm