Nov. 24 is a day many cell-phone users have been dreaming about. The fantasy goes like this: On that morning, customers living in the 100 biggest cities in the country will be able to walk into a competing wireless carrier's store, sign up for service, and have their old phone number transferred, without interruption, to the new phone that day.
No need to reprint business cards, no need to e-mail the new number to family members and friends.
The long-awaited, long-delayed onset of "wireless number portability" sounds good, but consumer groups warn that the reality may be more like this: The customer walks into the new carrier's store and is told he can't switch services until he talks to his old carrier. After he waits in line behind all the holiday shoppers, he gets interrogated by the other company, which tells him he must settle his outstanding bill and pay a fee to switch. Once he coughs up the cash, his phone goes dead for several hours -- or more -- until both firms' computers process the change.
More than half of Americans -- 150.2 million, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association -- now subscribe to a wireless phone service, and although consumers will benefit from the Federal Communications Commission rules that make it easier to switch cell-phone services, those advantages will exact their own price.
Most consumers already pay a monthly fee, between 32 cents and $1.75, to their provider for the future privilege of keeping their number. (T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless say they don't bill separately for the expense of supporting number transfers, but they do add on other regulatory costs.)
Wireless companies could also require departing customers to pay switching fees to take their number with them -- although all the wireless providers deny any such plans.
There are other, more specific quirks about how somebody would move a number between carriers:
• Leaving a wireless carrier before your contract expires has always triggered a penalty of $150 or more, and the new FCC regulations don't change that. Make sure you're not still covered by a contract before you think about trying to take your number elsewhere.
• If you want to keep your old number when you switch carriers, you should not cancel your old service first. Set up a new account with the new carrier, and the old plan will be closed once the number is transferred.
• Even when you keep your phone number, you probably won't be able to keep the actual phone. Most carriers sell phones that work only with their networks.
The idea behind the number-portability mandate -- first considered by the FCC in 1996 -- is not just to reduce the number of times people have to update their address books but also to foster the rivalry among wireless providers.
"What we want is to encourage as much competition as possible," and the new rules are designed to do that, said John B. Muleta, chief of the FCC's wireless bureau. That's what's happened in other countries that let customers take their wireless numbers with them.
When Hong Kong's six major wireless carriers started letting users keep their numbers in 1999, customers began changing their service once every 10 months on average, and prices fell, said David Meredith, a vice president of the consulting firm American Management Systems Inc.
Already in the United States, each year about a third of all cell-phone subscribers switch carriers, and number portability could boost that statistic to 40 percent by next year. Carriers spend more than $400 on average to attract each customer, Meredith said, so they'll have to step up their efforts to keep customers, with more attractive price plans and longer contract terms.
"It's going to be an arms race. The smart customer may actually come out ahead on this," Meredith said, if he carefully compares the rewards and drawbacks of contracts.
Some carriers are still fighting the deadline in court. AT&T Wireless, Cingular and Alltel are challenging the FCC's authority to impose number-portability rules in a suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, although analysts doubt any decision will push back the Nov. 24 deadline.
Verizon Wireless was once of the same opinion as these carriers, but it shifted stances this summer, when studies showed it would probably gain customers as a result of number portability.
And it's not just the wireless world that will feel the effects of these new rules. Although the FCC mandate does not specifically require that consumers be able to transfer numbers between wireless and conventional phones, telecommunications firms are moving to make that possible. This could lead more customers to get rid of their regular phones in favor of cellular service.
"I think it will certainly increase the move toward substituting wireless for wire-line phones," although cell phones can be less reliable than conventional phones for dialing 911 or during power outages, said Rebecca Arbogast, an analyst with Legg Mason.
But the rules here are less clear-cut than for wireless-to-wireless number transfers, owing to, among other things, different definitions of what's "local" between conventional phone companies and cellular carriers that might block some number swaps.
"The regulatory guidelines are just not there" for land-line-to-wireless transfers, said Thomas E. Wheeler, president and chief executive of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
On Thursday, the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered the FCC to clarify its rules.
The agency plans to offer more detailed guidelines to help carriers set rules for transfers from conventional phones to wireless, and vice versa, in the next couple of weeks. But the FCC is also encouraging carriers to work out agreements among themselves.
Last week, for instance, Verizon Wireless and its parent company, Verizon Communications Inc., said they will be able to move numbers back and forth.
Meanwhile, wireless carriers are still ironing out the details of wireless number transfers -- for example, how to make sure a customer request doesn't get hung up if one company spells an address using "Street" while another uses "St."
"We're making sure all that stuff works," said Dahna Hull, Cingular's director of marketing. "But there's likely to be some glitches," she added, especially in the first few days after Nov. 24.
Consumer groups continue to worry that companies will use this complexity as an excuse to obstruct users from switching.
"Carriers are going to adopt a strategy that will make it as difficult and expensive for customers to leave," said Carl Hilliard, president of Wireless Consumers Alliance Inc. "It's a very creative industry; they'll come up with ways to keep customers."
