Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Cellphone Number Transfer Hits a Snag

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2003 13:55:48 -0500

Wireless Carriers, Cell Phone Users Discover WNP Snags Wireless carriers and
cell phone users alike are discovering glitches in the wireless number
portability (WNP) system. Thousands have tried to make the switch to a new
carrier since the rule went into effect and while some switches were successful,
10 days later some customers are still waiting for their port to be completed.
The industry reports nearly 50 percent of attempted ports have failed. It is
reported that AT&T Wireless is experiencing the greatest difficulty porting
numbers, a problem the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is questioning.
The telecom regulator sent a letter to AT&T yesterday seeking an explanation for
the delays and inquiring what is being done to remedy the problem. AT&T
commented that it's experiencing a harder time than competitors in porting, and
has been unable to port on the first try more than 60 percent of the time. The
carrier says it will aim to solve these problems.  (Source: NY Times, Seattle
Times)

=====================================================================

December 5, 2003

Cellphone Number Transfer Hits a Snag

By MATT RICHTEL

     undreds of thousands of consumers have switched mobile phone providers in
the last 10 days since new federal rules went
     into effect allowing them to keep their cellphone numbers when they change
carriers. But mobile phone users looking for
improved phone reception and service have discovered a new problem: technical
glitches and delays in making the number
transfers.

Tens of thousands of customers have had to wait several days for their old
numbers to work on their new phones and some have
waited more than a week - even though switching a number is supposed to take
only a few hours. In fact, according to people in
the industry, the automated computer processes that are designed to carry out
the number switching have been failing about 50
percent of the time - making it necessary for the wireless carriers to check the
customer data manually, a time-consuming task.

The problems prompted the Federal Communications Commission yesterday to send a
letter to AT&T Wireless, one of the
largest mobile carriers, asking the company to explain the reasons for the
delays and what it is doing to remedy the problem.
AT&T Wireless said that its automated number switching was failing about 60
percent of the time, higher than the industry
average.

Competitors and industry analysts have said that AT&T Wireless had experienced
problems both in sending its numbers to other
carriers and in receiving the phone numbers of new customers.

Rochelle Cohen, a spokeswoman for AT&T Wireless, said that the company was
"working as hard as we can to address the
operational issues" but that the company was still "telling customers to expect
number porting to take approximately five days."

She said the company looked forward to responding to the letter from the F.C.C.
Although delays at AT&T Wireless appear
more pronounced than at other carriers, all are facing similar problems.
According to reports from analysts and consumers, most
switches have taken longer than a few hours, the goal regulators hoped carriers
could achieve. Bryon Tramont, chief of staff for
the F.C.C., said the regulatory agency fully expected AT&T Wireless and the
industry to perform better. "It's slower than we
thought it would be," he said. "If this is as good as it gets, we'd be extremely
disappointed and we'd consider other enforcement
actions." But, he added, "every indication is that it's getting better by the
day."

Even as it struggles to improve its switching speed, AT&T Wireless may be
getting bad news about its subscriber numbers.
Industry analysts and wireless companies said that about 80,000 Americans were
switching providers each day, and that the
preliminary numbers suggested that AT&T Wireless was losing more customers than
other companies.

The analysts said Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile were gaining customers, while
Sprint PCS, Nextel and Cingular Wireless are
losing roughly the same number of customers as they are gaining. The companies,
however, declined to give specifics on
customer turnover, saying they would release figures only when they report their
overall company performance.

"It's premature and speculative to declare so-called winners and losers at this
early stage," said Ms. Cohen from AT&T
Wireless. She said the company would release figures at the end of January when
it made an earnings filing with the Securities
and Exchange Commission.

Before the number transfer rules went into effect on Nov. 24, the mobile
industry cautioned that there could be delays caused by
the automated computer systems designed to move customers' numbers from one
company to another.

A carrier signing up a competitor's customer has to enter that customer's name,
address, Social Security number and other data
into its computer system, making sure that it matches data from the transferring
system. If the data does not match up, the two
companies must then manually verify the information, a process that can take
days.

Ed Evans, the chief executive of TSI Telecommunication Services Inc., which
operates the automated hand-off service for five of
the major mobile companies, says another problem is that individual carriers'
computer systems have at times gone down,
causing requests to expire before they can be fulfilled.

A spokesman for Verizon Wireless, Jeffrey Nelson, said there was no single
reason for the delays, with the carriers and their
hardware and software partners all sharing responsibility.

The situation is improving, he said, and yesterday afternoon Verizon was telling
customers to expect number transfers to take
anywhere from "a few hours to 72 hours," depending on what company they were
switching from.

Some analysts speculated that AT&T Wireless might have longer-than-average
delays because it uses a different transfer
processing service than the other mobile companies. It uses NeuStar Inc., based
in Sterling, Va., for automating its number
switches while the other carriers all use TSI. But Venkates Swaminathan, a
senior vice president at NeuStar, said he did not
think that either AT&T Wireless or NeuStar was performing less well than the
competition because the troubles spanned the
whole industry.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/technology/05phone.html?th

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/