By Hallam Hope
Would you like the option to change your cellular or landline service provider and still keep what might be a cherished telephone number?
Since the arrival of Cingular Wireless six years ago and its subsequent acquisition by Digicel I have remained a loyal customer. My cellular number, now applied to my Blackberry, has always been 822-1414. And I would not want to change it for the world. For most business persons like myself my cellular number is an important marketing tool. Family, friends and business contacts know the number by heart.
So nobody wants to change their number and might, rather, opt for a second phone because it is cheaper to use a phone from a particular service provider and make and send calls to contacts on that same network.
But the quality of service and quality of customer care can vary from one communications carrier to another. So LIME strives to keep its customers happy through attractive service and product offers and likewise Digicel does the same. And as more people get to know that TeleBarbados offers a residential and business telephone service in competition with LIME so too it is likely that these companies would want to compete and offer more attractive service.
Regulators have, for years, wondered whether it would aid competition and increase access to service if the consumer would have an option to change their telephony service provider and still keep that valuable number.
After all, if we changed our service providers today because we were unhappy with their service or what we pay for it, we would be unable to keep our numbers. And the loss of that number could mean the potential loss of business, disruption in contact with those persons who are familiar with the number and we would also have to change letterheads.
Well, regulators have found an answer. It’s called Local Number Portability or the ability to change your telephone or cellular service provider and still keep that all important number. It’s similar to being able to eat your cake and still have it : the best of worlds.
Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago are at very advanced stages of offering this option to their citizens. Word from the communications world is that Barbados and other Eastern Caribbean countries might also be interested in providing a similar option to citizens.
And would it not be nice if Caribbean countries would harmonise their approaches in this area so that there is consistency in what is available in several territories. Efforts at harmonising communications policy has been well under way in a number of other areas related to communications under a European Union-funded project administered by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). This three-year project, which includes harmonisation of legislation and harmonised policy, is on target and at a half-way stage.
But back to Local Number Portability; there has been positive news recently from the Dominican Republic. Indotel, the regulator, says Number Portability has enhanced competition and resulted in better services and prices for consumers.
Head of the Regulatory Department at Indotel, Julissa Cruz Abreu, says you should not measure the success of LNP in the Dominican Republic in terms of the number of customers who have changed providers but in the effects in the market and how it has made competition more dynamic, with a reduction in prices, and at the same time an improvement in the quality of service and investment.
As of December 2010, 15 months into the programme, 58,278 consumers had switched providers. The regulator says the success of the programme is reflected in the number of special deals now available. She also told Listin Diario newspaper that while list prices have remained stable, consumers can now choose between getting free access to their favourite telephone numbers, free use of calls between their provider on weekends, equaling of cost of local calls and international calls, and thousands of free minutes during the year. Cruz Abreu added that as an indirect consequence the price of broadband Internet service has dropped.
“While numeric portability has to do with telephones, the technological evolution has brought us the convergence of services,” she said. She added that 30 per cent of the numbers switched in the first year were fixed lines, adding that this led to telephone companies improving their residential and commercial plans.
So are you ready for Local Number Portability?
(Hallam Hope is a communications consultant. Email: caritel@hallamhope.com)
