Subject: [NEXTEL-1] NEWS ALERT -- Porting Delivers Fits, Starts

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 10:12:21 -0500

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Wireless Week
Breaking News Alert
November 25, 2003
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Porting Delivers Fits, Starts
By Karen Brown

At least one major U.S. carrier is finding wireless numbers
portability is not an easy task. While several major carriers were
reporting relatively stable systems for number transfers on the first
day, AT&T Wireless apparently was experiencing problems.

A Wireless Week reporter calling into the carrier's customer service
center to transfer service from another carrier was told the system
was down, and no requests would be processed until today.

"We did encounter some issues that are not surprising that we would
encounter on the first day of something as complex as something like
this - something that the industry has never tried before," said
spokesman Mark Siegel. "So to set people's expectations realistically,
what we are telling customers is, just to be safe, plan on 24 hours."

The industry transfer goal is two and a half hours, but "we would
rather, as we have been all along, be realistic about what to expect
particularly on the first day of this incredibly complex process,"
Siegel said.

Elsewhere, other carriers reported higher call volumes but were
succeeding in transferring numbers. So far, Nextel Communications
Inc.'s systems seem to be working well, "but it is pretty early still
to tell how the transfer process between the carriers are functioning
on a regular basis," according to spokeswoman Karen Lien Miller.

Many analysts had predicted Verizon Wireless would be an early winner
in the wireless LNP derby, and the numbers appeared to point in that
direction.

"We have had volume in our stores and telesales, which is the
toll-free number, up between 200 and 400 percent over last year the
Monday before Thanksgiving," said spokesman Jeffrey Nelson. "That's
entirely due to portability."

Verizon did plan for significant early fallout - port transfers that
don't succeed because of errors - and it has set up a 1,000-employee
center in Tennessee to field the problem cases. While he wouldn't give
exact numbers, Nelson said the majority of requests are going through.

"We are seeing slightly higher [volume] than we had hoped requiring
human touch, but it's not unmanageable," he noted.

He also wouldn't say whether Verizon gained more customers than it
lost on the first day, but he did say "it has been a very, very good
day for us."

Regional carriers including U.S. Cellular also were seeing the volume
increase.

"I've been out at four to five stores in Chicago today, and they were
all very busy," said Jay Ellison, U.S. Cellular's executive vice
president. "We were actually as of mid-morning starting to get
bounce-back activations, so we're pretty happy with the first several
hours of the activity, both from good volume to the store to not
really any technological glitches."

As with Verizon, U.S. Cellular won't release exact numbers for the
number of customers moving on or off its service, but "I will tell you
that our volume in is greater than our volume out," Ellison said.

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