For Cell Firms, a Number Crunch
It’s dial-a-deal time.
Glenn Stevens, cellphone shopper extraordinaire, said he felt empowered as never before as he hopped around town interviewing phone companies.
Stevens manages 12 cellphone accounts with four carriers for a local real estate firm. The new rules allowing people to switch carriers and keep their phone numbers, which took effect Monday, gave him new bargaining muscles, and he isn’t afraid to flex them.
“I think now is the best time ever,” Stevens said at a Verizon Wireless store downtown, on the eve of the switch. Stevens wanted a plan with unlimited talk time, no roaming fees and a fat discount off new phones. If Verizon Wireless can’t deliver, fine. “I’m getting a competing offer from AT&T; Wireless later this afternoon,” he said.
Verizon Wireless, Cingular Wireless and other U.S. cellular operators fielded phone-number transfers estimated in the hundreds of thousands from customers who wanted to change carriers Monday, according to a company helping to handle the switches.
More than 12 million phone number transfers are expected by the end of the year, according to the Number Portability Administration Center Forecasting Group. But the number was lower than some analysts had expected.
The cellphone industry has turned into a bazaar, with vendors shouting over one another to bargain with discriminating customers like Stevens. Everywhere consumers turn, there’s another phone rebate in the mail, a bigger package deal on the Internet, a more generous family plan in the newspaper.
Cingular this month started offering 500 bonus minutes. Sprint PCS is selling plans with two extra hours of unlimited calling a day for $5 more a month. Nextel is offering airline points to new customers. T-Mobile expanded its unlimited weekend calling plan to include Fridays, and AT&T; is mailing special credit offers to entice people to sign contracts.
Mobile phone companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on promotions, discounts and freebies. That’s on top of the $1.7 billion they spent on advertising during the first half of this year. Analysts said a key reason is fear of losing their best customers, and a desire to lure new ones, after consumers gain the freedom to move their numbers.
The rules, issued by the Federal Communications Commission and delayed for six years, not only allow people to move numbers between cellphone carriers but also let users transfer home numbers to cellphones. The rules took effect in the 100 largest metropolitan areas and will apply to the rest of the country May 24. Efforts last week by local-phone groups to delay the rules were unsuccessful.
To help customers comparison shop, Web sites have popped up with names like NumberPortability.com and WireFly.com. Changes in rate plans are so frequent that WireFly.com updates its information 30 times a day, said the company’s chief executive, David Steinberg.
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Bloomberg News was used in compiling this report.
