Post by clarencebunsen on Apr 11, 2014 11:55:17 GMT -5
Why you shouldn’t get too attached to your phone number
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/04/09/why-you-shouldnt-get-too-attached-to-your-phone-number/
This is one of those days I'm asking "Can't these guys get anything right?"
The greatest innovations are often those we quickly take for granted.
Many Americans have probably forgotten that until 1997 it was impossible to keep the same local telephone number when moving from one carrier to another. Portability for mobile numbers has only been possible for the last decade.
And yet portability is now an essential feature of modern communications. With as many as 80 percent of all Americans having already cut the cord to the old wired phone network in favor of Internet-based or mobile service, number portability (first mandated by Congress in 1996) has given consumers valuable flexibility. It has also enhanced the environment for competing voice services, especially among mobile providers, and accelerated the move to better and cheaper digital technologies.
The innovation behind number portability is the creation, in the late 90’s, of a single database connecting numbers to devices that all carriers access when completing calls. That database now contains more than 500 million numbers and is queried over one million times every day.
But that profoundly useful system may now be at risk of a pointless and completely avoidable meltdown.
Many Americans have probably forgotten that until 1997 it was impossible to keep the same local telephone number when moving from one carrier to another. Portability for mobile numbers has only been possible for the last decade.
And yet portability is now an essential feature of modern communications. With as many as 80 percent of all Americans having already cut the cord to the old wired phone network in favor of Internet-based or mobile service, number portability (first mandated by Congress in 1996) has given consumers valuable flexibility. It has also enhanced the environment for competing voice services, especially among mobile providers, and accelerated the move to better and cheaper digital technologies.
The innovation behind number portability is the creation, in the late 90’s, of a single database connecting numbers to devices that all carriers access when completing calls. That database now contains more than 500 million numbers and is queried over one million times every day.
But that profoundly useful system may now be at risk of a pointless and completely avoidable meltdown.
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/04/09/why-you-shouldnt-get-too-attached-to-your-phone-number/
This is one of those days I'm asking "Can't these guys get anything right?"
