Despite wireless carrier-generated public-relations hype surrounding the success of initial number porting, which was helped by only a slight increase in customer traffic, a number of analysts questioned the first day’s success of the Federal Communications Commission mandate.
Wireless industry research firm Mobile Competency reported that less than 100,000 people attempted number porting yesterday, and of those attempts, carriers reported failures in the 40-percent range. A similar report from RBC Capital Markets found that of the porting samples it obtained from a variety of carriers, none of the porting requests were completed on the first day.
Bob Egan, president and founder of Mobile Competency, noted that based on telephone surveys and executive interviews, overall store traffic was up between three and four times across all operators Monday with peak traffic about eight times higher than normal. In-store observations and interviews conducted by RCR Wireless News found carrier-branded retail outlets experienced the most customer traffic early Monday compared with indirect channels that showed little foot traffic.
“We have not done a port yet today so we have not seen any problems yet,” said an employee at a Denver area independent retailer, who said he expects to see more requests later this week.
Egan added that of the nationwide operators, Verizon Wireless and Nextel Communications Inc. came out as the winners on the first day of number portability, Sprint PCS and T-Mobile USA Inc. were neutral, and AT&T Wireless Services Inc. and Cingular Wireless L.L.C. were the day’s losers. Both Mobile Competency and RBC noted AT&T Wireless is still suffering from back-end porting delays that could be related to its GSM software system, which has affected the carrier since the beginning of the month.
RBC also reported only partial porting success in caller identification and text messaging services, including ported numbers not appearing correctly displayed on a recipient’s handset and the inability to send or receive text messages from a ported number.
Back-end fraud management provider Lightbridge Inc. said it saw only a handful of porting bottlenecks at its call center operations, with the largest coming from markets in Puerto Rico, which the company attributed to routing calls to Spanish-speaking agents and a local promotion from Cingular Wireless touting a boxing hero porting his number to Cingular.
Lightbridge General Manager Kevin Bresnahan said the company did not expect a huge influx of porting requests Monday, but it is predicting at least a 30-percent increase in requests for the day after Thanksgiving, which is usually one of the busiest shopping days of the year.
