Wireless Number Portability Countdown

This month marks the start of wireless number portability (WNP) in Canada. Come March 14, mobile users should be able to switch carriers without losing their numbers. It’s a big deal: our lack of WNP has long been described as a kind of false security system for service providers. It keeps customers, loath to change phone numbers, from leaving their existing carriers and signing deals with new ones. The common theory suggests that WNP will rid Bell Mobility, Telus Corp. and Rogers Wireless Inc. of this unwarranted advantage. But freedom is only as good as WNP service performance. And even now, so close to WNP’s supposed start-date, there are no guarantees that the system will work.On January 31 the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association’s (CWTA) WNP Implementation Task Force (WNPITF) submitted its quarterly report on WNP development to the CRTC. It identified numerous hurdles that had yet to be cleared, including:Carrier confusion: Many carriers were supposed to participate in the WNP rollout, but according to the WNPITF, 28 small incumbent local exchange carriers (SILECs) would not join the project "until a full public hearing is held." The task force said the situation could confuse customers as to where WNP would be available. Bulk porting: Nearly 3 million phone numbers must be wrenched from their ILEC underpinnings and locked down to the competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and resellers using them. It’s the only way to ensure numbers can be ported efficiently. But as the task force said, "with any new high-volume industry activity, there exist many unknowns which add risk and the possibility of delay." The industry was 100,000 numbers behind schedule by January 28. Clearinghouse application: Des-igned to handle customer transfer requests between carriers, the application was working fine for wireless-to-wireless ports, but not so well for intermodal handoffs – wireless-to-wireline and vice versa. "Several key defects remain outstanding and the quality of the code continues to be a concern." The task force said each new version of the code required carriers to retest the entire application, which delayed things. "The limited time available for production testing is significantly less than…would be considered prudent for any major software application." Testing: Testing time concerns might also affect the service management gateway (SMG) and its trial processes. Designed to send numbers out of and into carriers according to port requests, the SMG had undergone only "limited production environment testing" and "no OSS testing has occurred in the SMG production environment," the task force said. Although the SMG is an inter-carrier matter, it must connect to the clearinghouse application, so clearinghouse test delays impact SMG implementation. Some carriers were conducting SMG tests alongside clearinghouse tests to facilitate the process, the task force said, but that’s not ideal – it doesn’t consider SMG-to-clearinghouse interoperability. As well, "certain carriers have delayed the scheduled start of their participation in inter-carrier testing due to internal development problems." According to Marc Choma, spokesman for the CWTA in Ottawa, tests are the industry’s biggest bugbear. "The original plan called for the nationwide implementation in September 2007," he said during a late-January interview. "The CRTC moved that up by six months. There is a huge amount of testing that has to be done in order to make this happen."Asked if carriers would be ready for WNP on March 14, Choma said, "As of now, the information I have is everyone is doing their very best to make it happen on March 14."Looking ForwardJanice Vickery, for one, is looking forward to the start-date. A senior telecom analyst at Precision Drilling Corp. in Calgary, she has high hopes for WNP. "I know in Precision’s case the inability to port numbers to other vendors when dealing with over 1,000 units in the field was a huge incentive to stay with our current vendor," she said via email. "I am eager to see what vendors will use to gain the competitive advantage now and I am quite interested in what impact this will have on their pricing model."But Vickery is also skeptical. "I think it will take at least a year to iron out all the bugs…and I for one am not interested in being a guinea pig while they do this."Iain Grant, head of the SeaBoard Group, a telecom research firm with offices in Toronto and Montreal, said WNP might spell lower wireless prices for businesses, but that’s not the whole story. Companies must mind certain issues:How well do you know your contracts? Companies locked into service contracts must prepare for the end dates. "If the corporation hasn’t got its wireless comms policy figured out, there is a real danger that the carriers may affect renewals by dangling a particularly juicy carrot – thereby locking in the user for another two to three years." Who owns the number? Many companies let users choose their own handsets and packages, and workers expense usage. This complicates corporate-wide attempts to corral users into one service provider’s pen, regardless of WNP and the fact that employees wouldn’t lose their numbers in the transfer. What about future technologies? It’s not clear how WNP will work with next-generation equipment. For instance, network vendors such as Cisco Systems Inc. and Avaya Inc. have developed business phone systems that marry in-office wireless LANs to wide-area networks. Ideally customers, carriers and gear makers would work together on such interconnective platforms, "but we’re not there yet," Grant said. Churn ConcernPerhaps part of the reason "we’re not there yet" has to do with a particular carrier concern. When WNP first twinkled in users’ eyes as a service-provider chain-breaker, carriers seemed to think it would increase "churn" – clients would jump from provider to provider as if from sinking ships, heedless of loyalty and the expense carriers face to win new customers. But that’s not what happened in countries that have implemented WNP. "Churn isn’t what you would expect it to be," said Mark Tauschek, an industry analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London ON. "When the US implemented it, there was a little blip initially but it settled out pretty quick."Choma noticed the same thing. "In some cases churn decreased….It’s hard to say if it’s increased competition, or if people are generally satisfied, or if they’ve become attached to a particular provider."Tauschek figures competition has a lot to do with it. "Carriers became more competitive, and not just on price – on customer service, on handset availability, on coverage. It really forces their hand. They know they don’t really have something to keep you with them anymore – except, of course, the two-year deal you signed."A two-year deal also happens to be just what the wireless industry bargained for in the beginning. In 2005 a CWTA-commissioned report from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) said it would take until September 2007 for the Canadian mobile sector to implement WNP."Do it once and do it right," read the PwC paper. "WNP shortcuts in terms of process development and system testing should not be taken. Developing business processes is time and resource consuming."But telecom observers balked, arguing that it shouldn’t take so long."We already have number portability," wrote the SeaBoard analysts. "We can take a telephone number from Bell Canada, move it to Rogers Telecom and move it again to Vonage.…The issues have been addressed and the process has been mapped." March 14 a Reasonable DateThe CRTC decided in December 2005 that March 14 was a reasonable WNP start date. The commission instigated regulatory processes – public notices, consultations, et cetera – to make it happen. But judging from the WNPITF’s report, the CWTA blames the truncated implementation period for the testing issues that might now hold the system back. From the carriers’ perspective the Canadian situation is not ideal, especially when compared with that of the US. South of the border, operators were given eight years to wrestle with WNP. "And there are still areas where it’s not working properly," Choma said.But some observers have said US carriers could have worked much quicker, and nothing more than fear of skyrocketing churn kept them from implementing WNP in a matter of months.Still, that’s down there. Up here, WNP could have unexpected effects on carriers, customers, and how they interact. That’s simply a matter of geography: every location has its own, unique dynamics, so no matter how similar our WNP implementation may be to that of the US, no one can say that what happened in the States will happen here. Our situation could yield WNP success or a disaster. Telemanagement’s advice? Stand back. WNP might work as planned on day one. It might not. After March 14, companies should try porting on a small scale to see if the system does what it’s supposed to do before expecting it to bust the service provider shackles.

Wireless Number Portability Countdown

News | March 1, 2007

Unlock all the Canadian telecom, broadcasting and digital media news you need.

FREE TRIAL

SUBSCRIBE

Inside The Wire Report

Information

Hill Times Publishing

Get in Touch With Us