Gearing Up for the Big Switch

By LISA NAPOLI
Published: Thursday, November 13, 2003

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GUY RADER lives in Queens, but when it comes to cellphone service, he feels as if he has been ''in pre-glasnost Russia.''

That is because he has not been able to switch wireless companies without giving up his number, which he has had for four years. But in 11 days, new federal rules will let him move his number from Sprint to a new provider, so he says he intends to start ''playing the field,'' studying offers from rival companies he has previously ignored lest he suffer from amenity envy.

''I'd love to have a different selection of phones,'' said Mr. Rader, 29, a freelance video editor. ''I'd love to have rollover minutes. It's not so much that I hate Sprint. I hate being locked to it.''

Mr. Rader and many of the nation's 148 million other wireless customers will no longer be locked in after Nov. 24, yet the question is whether freedom can be achieved without chaos. Moving a phone number to a new provider may sound simple, but it is anything but.

Wireless companies and industry analysts question whether the carriers will be able to accommodate those who choose to make the switch. Studies predict more customer turnover in an industry already rife with it. Some 39 million people changed carriers last year, even without being able to take their number with them, and the Yankee Group, a research and consulting firm, predicts that the number will rise to 50 million in the coming year.

There is no way, until the new rules take effect, to determine whether the complex systems built to allow the transfer of numbers from provider to provider will actually work, or how long a transfer, known in the industry as ''porting,'' will actually take.

Adding to the challenge, the Federal Communications Commission ruled on Monday that land-line numbers, too, would be fair game for transfer to a customer's wireless service. (For New Yorkers, that holds the prospect of perhaps the ultimate telephonic status symbol, a 212 cellphone number.)

When pressed, executives in the wireless industry acknowledge that the systems they have built in anticipation of the new rules could very well falter. Naysayer analysts have been more blunt about the potential for pandemonium.

''Mark my words: 30 percent of these attempted ports are going to fail,'' said Bob Egan, founder of Mobile Competency, a consulting firm, and author of a report titled ''Wireless Number Portability: This Ain't Y2K.'' ''This is a procedurally complex scenario. You're not just moving a phone number. You're moving from a network based on one technology and particular handset and billing system to another.''

Getting those networks to communicate with one another has kept companies essential to the equation extremely busy and required an enormous investment. Since 1996, when the Telecommunications Act mandated the transition to portability, the industry has spent $1.2 billion in preparation, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, the wireless trade group -- while, for the most part, fighting the mandate in court. Standards have been set, workers have been hired and trained, software has been designed, computer systems have been upgraded, and compatibility between those systems has been tested.

And freedom, for many, has already had its cost. Some carriers, with F.C.C. approval, have added monthly fees to customer bills to subsidize the cost.

For years now, the telecommunications industry has allowed customers another sort of choice, the ability to switch long-distance carriers on their home phones. That process is still not standardized from carrier to carrier, and in many cases is performed manually, industry executives say. (Wireless number transfers will require fewer pieces of information and are designed to work, under ideal circumstances, without human intervention.)

Those difficulties have not deterred consumers eager to find the best deal for phone service. ''Every second, every day, 365 days a year, someone changes their long-distance carrier,'' said Rich Nespola, chief executive of the Management Network Group, a consulting firm. ''That's still going on. Given choice, people exercise it. It's an amazing phenomenon.'' In the last five years, competing carriers and even cable companies have made choice possible in local phone service as well, although the process of changing can take days and is far from trouble-free.
''Mark my words: 30 percent of these attempted ports are going to fail,'' said Bob Egan, founder of Mobile Competency, a consulting firm, and author of a report titled ''Wireless Number Portability: This Ain't Y2K.'' ''This is a procedurally complex scenario. You're not just moving a phone number. You're moving from a network based on one technology and particular handset and billing system to another.''

Getting those networks to communicate with one another has kept companies essential to the equation extremely busy and required an enormous investment. Since 1996, when the Telecommunications Act mandated the transition to portability, the industry has spent $1.2 billion in preparation, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, the wireless trade group -- while, for the most part, fighting the mandate in court. Standards have been set, workers have been hired and trained, software has been designed, computer systems have been upgraded, and compatibility between those systems has been tested.

And freedom, for many, has already had its cost. Some carriers, with F.C.C. approval, have added monthly fees to customer bills to subsidize the cost.

For years now, the telecommunications industry has allowed customers another sort of choice, the ability to switch long-distance carriers on their home phones. That process is still not standardized from carrier to carrier, and in many cases is performed manually, industry executives say. (Wireless number transfers will require fewer pieces of information and are designed to work, under ideal circumstances, without human intervention.)

Those difficulties have not deterred consumers eager to find the best deal for phone service. ''Every second, every day, 365 days a year, someone changes their long-distance carrier,'' said Rich Nespola, chief executive of the Management Network Group, a consulting firm. ''That's still going on. Given choice, people exercise it. It's an amazing phenomenon.'' In the last five years, competing carriers and even cable companies have made choice possible in local phone service as well, although the process of changing can take days and is far from trouble-free.

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