Have number, will travel: moving your mobile phone number to a new wireless carrier.

• Author: Held, Shari
• Position: Communications - Wireless local number portability

IF YOU LOVE THEM, SET them free. That's the tune U.S. wireless carriers are hearing since wireless local number portability, or WLNP, went into effect late last month. For consumers, it's a win-win situation, whether they switch carriers or not. How it will ultimately affect the cellular phone industry remains to be seen.

As many know by now, WLNP allows customers, both businesses and individuals, to retain their phone numbers when switching from one wireless carrier to another, or even from a landline to wireless service. This eliminates the inconvenience of getting a new phone number and gives customers more flexibility to change carriers.

Greg Haller, Indiana/ Michigan/Kentucky region president for Verizon Wireless, says WLNP is great news for small businesses that use their mobile number as their primary number, have that number painted on the sides of their vehicles or have vanity numbers that spell out the company name or product.

"They want everybody to know that mobile number because not only are they the president, but they are also the person out there potentially doing the work," says Haller. "Their office is literally on their belt every day."

Large businesses also benefit from the change. "If you imagine a Fortune 100 company that has been with a particular carrier for a certain time, they don't want to change the number because they have published it in so many places," says Anita Otto, director of business sales in Indiana and Ohio for Sprint. "So this really gives a smooth transition for enterprise customers who want to maintain that number, but want new choices in technology and devices."

Not everyone will be able to make the change immediately. The FCC mandate required carriers to be ready to allow customers to move or "port" their numbers on November 24th in only the top 100 metropolitan statistical areas. For Indiana, that means only consumers in Indianapolis and Fort Wayne are covered initially. The option is to be available everywhere else by May 24, 2004.

It is important to note that even then, numbers are eligible to port only within the same local geographic area--Indianapolis-to-Indianapolis will work, for example, but Indianapolis-to-Kokomo will not. and while customers may port between landline and wireless services, paging is not included in the mandate.

U.S. carriers have no idea what to expect. According to an October TMNG survey, 20 percent of all wireless subscribers, roughly 30 million customers, anticipate...