WASHINGTON-Wireless customers are still complaining with their feet.
Three million customers switched mobile-phone providers from December 2004 to the end of April, and the figure does not include customers who may have switched carriers more than once during that period, according to a report released Monday by the Federal Communications Commission.
Using information obtained from NeuStar Inc., the industry analysis and technology division of the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau said 11.3 million wireless customers have switched providers and taken their telephone numbers with them since wireless local number portability began Nov. 24, 2003.
Since the database does not record double switches, customers who may have switched their providers more than once in the December-to-April timeframe would be counted only once.
“The LNP database was designed solely for the purpose of routing calls. As such, it retains only the most recent porting activity for any given number. So if a consumer ports a number from carrier A to carrier B, and later the consumer ports the number from carrier B to carrier C, the numbers will not reflect the original port from carrier A to carrier B. Also, numbers that revert back to the original carrier, either through a customer porting back to the original carrier, or discontinuing service with that number, are dropped from the database,” said the FCC.
The FCC also reported that NeuStar said that more than 1 million customers have cut the cord since November 2003 but 16,000 customers have signed up for landline service using their wireless phone numbers during that same time period.
Twice a year, all telecommunications carriers are required to tell the FCC how they are using the telephone numbers they have received from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator. Currently 1.3 billion telephone numbers have been assigned to carriers, 550 million of these are connected to customers, 86 million are being used for administrative purposes and 665 million are still in the control of carriers waiting to be assigned to customers.
Just as wireless subscribership has surpassed the number of landlines, mobile-phone carriers are using more telephone numbers than incumbent local exchange carriers, according to the report.
“The overall utilization rate for wireless carriers was 54.6 percent, up from 53.6 percent six months before,” said the FCC. “The overall utilization rate for ILECs was 53.5 percent, down from 54.3 percent six months before.”
With the advent of competition and the dramatic rise in mobile-phone usage, the FCC began requiring carriers to obtain numbers in blocks of 1,000 rather than blocks of 10,000 as had been the previous tradition. “Thousands-block pooling has made it unnecessary to distribute 153 million telephone numbers,” said the FCC.
