WASHINGTON-A rural wireless carrier that began porting customers in November told reporters Thursday that 24 percent of its ports had come from wireline customers.
Terry Addington, president of First Cellular of Southern Illinois, said porting customers had complained about rising wireline bills and added the mobility of wireless service prompted them to make the change.
Nationwide it is believed that intermodal porting accounts for less than 10 percent of all ports. “Intermodal-porting volume is low at this point,” said William Maher, chief of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau.
Addington said that only Verizon Wireless agreed to port with him before the May 24 deadline for rural wireless local number portability, and after that date, he will still be unable to port with rural wireline carriers because Illinois state regulators gave them a 30-month waiver from the obligation to port numbers.
Intermodal porting could have a negative impact on rural wireline carriers, said George Reed-Dellinger of Washington Analysis.
“The potential churn and increased competition will only add to the continued uncertainty surrounding ongoing negotiations to restructure the rural telcos’ remaining profitable revenue streams-long-distance access and the Universal Service Fund,” said Reed-Dellinger in a note Thursday.
The Federal Communications Commission last week urged state regulators not to grant waivers to rural wireline companies, arguing the benefits of competition outweigh the harm done to wireline carriers.
While the FCC instituted wireline LNP years ago, carriers were not required to upgrade their switches until competition appeared in their service area. For many rural carriers, that competition did not come, so they were unprepared for wireless LNP. Rural carriers that served wireless carriers whose coverage area overlapped areas that implemented porting in November were given an extension by the FCC until May, but all carriers and all markets should begin porting May 24 unless state regulators give the rural wireline carriers waivers.
