NEW YORK-Microcell Tele-communications Inc. is hoping Canadian regulators will follow the lead of the United Kingdom and Hong Kong in granting customers mobile number portability (MNP) as they change carriers.
The Montreal, Canada-based company is the parent of a personal communications services provider with a nationwide 30-megahertz license that launched commercial service under the Fido brand name late in 1996.
As of mid-April, Microcell was still awaiting a response to its request for mandated PCS and cellular number portability from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).
“We are hoping for a final decision, but my total guess is to expect a formal call for comments before CRTC says, `Yes, we’ll mandate (this)’, ” said Dean Proctor, vice president of regulatory affairs for Microcell.
“The technology is here now, so it’s a question of regulatory and industry will.”
However, Denis Carmel, a public affairs officer for the CRTC, said the federal agency has some concerns about the fact that MNP is technologically easier for GSM carriers like Microcell.
Dawn Hunt, vice president of government and intercarrier relations for TDMA carrier Rogers Cantel Inc., also questions the implementation of MNP in Canada. She said MNP in Canada is impractical without local number portability in the United States.
“The CRTC has found U.S. LNP to be a prerequisite,” said Hunt. “We could go into a `Canada-only’ implementation, but the problem is there are North American suppliers and vendors that would have to be convinced. We don’t know what the costs would be, and at the end of the day, costs have to be passed on to customers or the vendors.
“It’s an issue of whether it’s practical. The FCC concluded it is not a current priority. Churn is already high, and a lot of wireless customers are moving easily and freely without number portability.”
Responding to Microcell’s request in December that it mandate number portability, the CRTC decided in late January to give cellular and PCS carriers the option to provide this. Microcell subsequently resubmitted its request for a mandate.
“Our (new) application says (that) since cellular phone companies’ numbers belong to [incumbent local exchange carriers], why not first mandate porting out, where the numbers have to leave the network?” Proctor questioned.
Ironically, while Microcell is lobbying hard to gain end-user number portability in its status as a PCS carrier, it is required to offer number portability in its planned role as a competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC), Proctor said. Microcell has filed an application to become a CLEC in accordance with a local telephone competition decision that the CRTC rendered in May 1997.
“Regulations and interconnection costs, especially interconnection costs, are the key to (PCS) pricing, so we want to dispense with the interconnections by becoming a CLEC,” Proctor said.
In preparation for its dual role as a CLEC and PCS carrier, Microcell in August 1998 “became the first carrier in North America to successfully port wireline numbers into a wireless network and vice versa,” Proctor said.
“When the first trials were completed in August 1998, they helped put to death the naysayers who said [number portability] is technically infeasible.”
For Rogers Cantel, the technical feasibility isn’t wholly the issue. “There has to be a community of interest,” said Hunt.
