WASHINGTON-Today the Federal Communications Commission is going forward with wireless local number portability by faith and fiat: they mandated it and now they hope it works.
“This is the right course, this is the right time and consumers want it right now. This is good for competition. This is good for the industry. This is great for consumers,” said K. Dane Snowden, chief of the FCC’s Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau. “We have to start somewhere and we have decided to start on Nov. 24.”
Today is the day the wireless industry has grudgingly accepted as the day carriers must allow their customers to port to another carrier and take their telephone number with them.
Will the sky fall or will there be minor inconveniences or will it be smooth sailing? It is hard to tell but last week saw everyone putting out the word. FCC Chairman Michael Powell participated in two press conferences and then did a satellite media tour of the top 100 metropolitan service areas.
The impact of WLNP is hard to predict, but a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll released on Friday suggested that the onslaught of switching expected today may not even occur. Only 1 percent of 700 mobile-phone users contacted said they would switch on Monday. That number grows to 4 percent within a month.
If consumers do wait, it may be hard to tell if there are problems that might need the FCC’s attention, said Snowden.
Late Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied the emergency stay request of four rural wireline carriers and set a briefing schedule for a separate petition by the United States Telecom Association that does not have the Federal Communications Commission responding until Wednesday. LNP will go forward as planned.
“By rushing out a one-sided rule that encourages only landline-to-wireless transfers, that promise was broken. USTA is working to ensure consumers have a real choice and local telecoms have the opportunity to compete rather than rules that simply tell them they can’t,” said Walter McCormick Jr., president and chief executive officer of the United States Telecom Association.
The wireless industry cried foul.
“Allowing this desperate attempt at delay will only confuse consumers and serve to limit competition. We hope the courts will side with consumers and deny the landline companies’ anti-competitive, anti-consumer request for a stay,” said Steve Largent, president and chief executive officer of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association. The FCC adhered to USTA’s demand that it rule by Thursday whether it was going to delay wireline-to-wireless porting until it figures out how to make it possible for most people to port from wireless to wireline.
“We continue to believe that our actions contained in the Intermodal LNP Order are lawful and supported by the record,” said the commission. “Intermodal number porting is a two-way obligation. Indeed, wireline carriers can port in some wireless numbers today. Moreover, a wireline carrier may compete to win back a customer who ported his home telephone number to a wireless carrier, provided that customer has remained at the same location. While there are circumstances under which a wireless carrier need not port a number to a requesting wireline carrier (i.e. where the wireless carrier seeks to port a number to a wireline telephone falling in a different rate center), the FCC has sought comment on how to facilitate wireless-to-wireline porting.”
USTA’s emergency stay request came one week after four rural wireline carriers also asked the D.C. Circuit for an emergency stay.
The rural arguments are slightly different, focusing instead on routing a call from the rural carrier’s rate center-geographic distinctions used by state regulators and landline phone companies to determine how much to charge for carrying a call-to a rate center of a different company. Currently, a long-distance carrier must connect calls that leave the rural telco’s rate center to the other end, and the customer is charged for the call. But the FCC said that if the ported number is calling a telephone number in the rate center of its original carrier, it must be considered a local call.
Some states have granted some rural wireline carriers limited relief.
WSIS-TV Channel 10 of Columbia, S.C., reported that South Carolina regulators have halted the rules for customers in Columbia and Charleston, S.C.
