Number Portability Soon?

Two House Bills of possible interest to mobile phone subscribers are up for Public Hearing next week: House Bill 1098 "An Act to Provide and Promote Number Portability for Cellular Mobile Telephone Service, and for Other Purposes" by Rep. Joey Salceda; House Bill 3408 "An Act Mandating Mobile Phone Service Providers to Give their Subscribers the Option to Retain their Numbers" by Rep. Joseph Santiago. Truth be told, HB3408 can be absorbed by HB1098 because number portability basically implies allowing subscribers to retain their numbers. But the question still remains... Are we finally on our way towards getting number portability? I wish. But we still have a long way to go. First things first Number portability allows you to keep your phone number regardless of which carrier you choose to provide you with mobile services. Thus, I may have a 0917 number (Globe), for instance, but, with number portability, I can actually decide to switch to SMART at anytime and still retain my 0917 number. The primary purpose of number portability is to remove the "switching costs" that prevent mobile users from moving from one service to another... mainly because telling everyone about a change of numbers can be bothersome. Henceforth, you can have just one mobile phone number for life. But it's going to be a tough road ahead before this Bill gets implemented. Because the telcos are not going to be happy. Too close for comfort Telcos are going to fight tooth and nail before number portability ever sees the light of day. It is to their interest to make it as difficult as possible for people to switch to some other provider. And they will claim to the highest heavens that it will simply be too expensive -- and almost impossible -- to convert their equipment to work with number portability. Well, okay, they may have a point. The ideal is for the telcos to link their databases together, so that anytime someone switches from SMART to Globe, both telco's databases are updated automatically so that they'd know who gets to manage a particular phone number from this point on. That's... a little too close for comfort for the telcos. It means Telco 1 communicating with Telco 2 to tell him, "Okay, I just lost another customer to you. Kindly update your database." (Or, alternatively, "Nyeh nyeh, I just got another of your customers, so there!") The other potential problem? The matter of prepaid SIM cards. While implementing number portability for subscriber ("postpaid") lines should be easy, doing this for prepaids can be a headache, primarily because of their anonymity. Does this mean that just anybody can show up at a telco's service center and demand that his prepaid number from another network be switched over, without having to say who he is or even presenting proof of ownership? Lastly, should number portability indeed be implemented, expect the telcos to slap a very high "switching fee" in order to artificially make switching difficult for consumers once again. They will claim that they need to charge the fee in order to offset the "difficulties in implementing number portability," but truth is they just want to give consumers a hard time. At any rate, if you want to toss your two cents into the debate on number portability, do attend the Public Hearing, to be held by the Committee on Information Communications Technology next Wednesday, March 1, 9:30am at Conference Room 11, R.V. Mitra building, Batasan Complex, Quezon City.