What is the difficulty in porting your number?

Number portability was once considered an important measure to promote full competition in domestic telecommunications services, and countless users expected this move to bring benefits of "speeding up and reducing fees". However, data recently released by the Beijing Consumer Association showed that 70% of respondents had encountered difficulties and obstacles in the process of "number portability". To put it simply, it is not easy for users to "divorce" their original telecom operators, and the troubles they encounter are often more complicated than the "cooling-off period".

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In theory, "number portability" is both an opportunity and a challenge for telecom operators. While trying to retain existing users, they are also expected to attract new users from other operators. But in reality, different operators may have subtle differences in their attitudes towards this reform. For some operators, the reason they were able to maintain high-profit tariffs for a long time was because of the long-term dependence of users on their original mobile phone numbers. Now that "number portability" is allowed, naturally a large number of users will switch to competitors with more favorable rates, which will in turn affect their own performance.

It is precisely under such profit-driven circumstances that some operators will do everything they can to set up obstacles for "number portability", with the required procedures becoming increasingly complicated and the introduction of relevant information becoming increasingly vague. In this survey conducted by the Beijing Consumer Association, many users attributed this to the poor service awareness of the operator staff. In fact, rather than blaming the grassroots staff, it is better to say that there is a problem with the internal mechanism of these operators, and they did not intend to let users leave easily from the beginning.

It can be seen that if we only rely on the interests within the market, some operators are bound to be hypocritical about "number portability". To change this situation, strong rules must be adopted to restrict it. Therefore, at the end of 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology specially issued the "Regulations on the Management of Number Portability Services", the core content of which is to clarify the behavioral boundaries of operators.

In the "Regulations on Number Portability Services", the most noteworthy item for users is Article 9, the first sentence of which is "telecommunications business operators shall not engage in the following acts in the process of providing number portability services". In the following series of prohibitions, Paragraphs (1) and (2) are the most common problems encountered by users, namely "refusing, blocking or delaying the provision of number portability services to users without justifiable reasons" and "interfering with the user's free choice after the user has submitted an application for number portability". Most of the obstacles encountered by users in the actual process of handling the procedures can be included in the scope of these two paragraphs.

Since there is a law to follow, how can it be enforced in practice? Or to put it more bluntly, can those operators who do not abide by the rules be punished? The answer is yes. According to Article 14 of the Regulations on Number Portability Services: "Any violation of these regulations shall be dealt with by the telecommunications management agency in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Telecommunications Regulations of the People's Republic of China." Article 40, paragraph 3 of the Telecommunications Regulations stipulates: "Telecommunications business operators shall not engage in the following acts in telecommunications services... (iii) Refuse, delay or suspend telecommunications services to telecommunications users without justifiable reasons"; Article 74 of the Telecommunications Regulations stipulates: "Any violation of Article 40 of these Regulations shall be ordered by the telecommunications management agency of the province, autonomous region or municipality directly under the Central Government to make corrections, apologize to the telecommunications users and compensate the losses of the telecommunications users; if the operator refuses to make corrections, apologize or compensate for the losses, he shall be given a warning and fined not less than RMB 10,000 but not more than RMB 100,000; if the circumstances are serious, he shall be ordered to suspend business for rectification."

In actual practice, there have been cases where operators have been fined for this. For example, the Shaanxi Provincial Communications Administration recently reported that China Mobile Xi'an Branch (hereinafter referred to as "Xi'an Mobile") adjusted the user agreement period to 20 years on its own according to the so-called "good number management method", and refused users to "port their numbers" on this basis. After the incident was exposed and investigated, not only did Xi'an Mobile receive a warning and a fine of 50,000 yuan, but several relevant persons in charge were also recorded, warned, and criticized. The harder the punishment, the less resistance there is to "porting your number".

On the other hand, facing the important right of "number portability", users also need to improve their awareness of rights protection. Faced with the risk of severe legal punishment, some operators may not rely on tough measures to prevent users from leaving, but may use various small favors to confuse users. Perhaps some users have noticed that in the past year, the preferential policies launched by various operators seem to have increased a lot, and it is easy to apply for "benefits" such as increased traffic or call time. But before applying, users had better pay attention to whether there is a contract period requirement for obtaining these "benefits"? If so, then during the period of enjoying the discount, the user may lose the qualification to apply for "number portability".

Of course, these new strategies of operators do not necessarily need to be rejected at one stroke. After all, the starting point of the "number portability" system is to allow users to enjoy benefits. If operators can take the initiative to promote this, it can also be regarded as achieving part of the purpose of the reform. However, in this process, it is still necessary to maximize the protection of users' right to know. That is, when operators provide such preferential policies, they must clearly inform users of the possible consequences, especially the correlation between the contract period and "number portability". Only by making the entire operation more open and transparent can we promote "number portability" and even safeguard the rights and interests of users.