Sprint and Verizon cut monthly number portability fees

It never quite sat right with us that the wireless carriers have been able to charge subscribers whatever fees they wanted to/could get away with for the costs of implementing cellphone number portability. It's perfectly legal for them to pass along the costs of number portability (and fair, too, since it was mandated by the FCC), but the problem is that there're no rules or limits on how much they can charge, and as far as we know, the FCC isn't checking to make sure that the carriers are only charging subscribers for the true costs of portability, rather than just padding the bottom line and disguising it as a tax or "regulatory recovery fee". Anyway, despite the fact that they could keep charging whatever they want, Verizon Wireless and Sprint have just announced that they're cutting back the monthly number portability fees, with Sprint dropping their fee to $0.25, and Verizon cutting it all the way back to a mere five cents. Let's see if Cingular, T-Mobile, and Nextel (which was once sued for disgusing charges as regulatory recovery fees) follow suit.

[Via MobileTracker]

[Olly Aitch @ Dec 19th 2005 12:06AM]

In the UK number portability is a given and any costs must be built in to the call/rental charges as there is no specific charge for porting. The process is fairly simple and the couple of times I have done it has proven to be painless.

[George @ Dec 19th 2005 12:06AM]

I was on a carrier that was charging for number portability, but some carriers don't. I decided "If I'm paying for it I might as well use it" and switched to one that didn't.