WASHINGTON-More than 300,000 customers have cut the cord since May with more than a half a million customers switching totally to wireless since local number portability became available last November, according to numbers made available by the Federal Communications Commission.
The total number for mobile-to-mobile switching increased from 3,344,800 at the end of April to 5,402,000 at the end of July.
The FCC does not routinely release LNP numbers because “providing porting volumes is always a bit tricky for us because we are not involved in the porting process so our information is not firsthand; it comes from NeuStar Inc.,” said Lauren Patrich, special counsel for media relations in the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
NeuStar is the independent contractor chosen by the FCC to facilitate LNP.
The FCC Thursday is expected to propose rules on how long it should take for a customer to cut the cord. Wireline portability normally takes four business days while wireless portability takes hours. It is unclear what the average time is for wireline-to-wireless porting, but wireline carriers have long maintained that four business days is as fast as they can complete a port.
As of the end of July, 544,000 customers had cut the cord compared with 229,300 April 30. All LNP numbers jumped from May to July, including those switching back to a wired world. At the end of April, a total of 7,200 had switched from mobile to landline service. This number grew to 9,000 by the end of July.
