Proposals likely to recommend ‘number portability’

Date: 11/07/1996

CONSUMERS who decide to switch from one telephone operator to another should be allowed to keep the same phone number, the Commission is expected to recommend in a discussion paper due out this autumn.

“We think this is an extremely important point. People must be able to maintain their original numbers,” said a Commission official.

The Green Paper is being drawn up in response to concern that, once the EU market is thrown open to competition in 1998, chaos will reign.

At the moment, most national markets are run by state-owned monopolies. Despite their obvious disadvantages, notably in terms of higher prices and poorer service, clients are at least guaranteed a number for life.

That, of course, could change once new operators enter the arena.

So far, however, it seems that most phone companies agree with the Commission on the need to ensure the 'portability' of numbers. After all, keeping ex-customers happy makes business sense - like the prodigal son, they might return one day.

Similarly, most firms agree that a single phone book is preferable to several operator-by-operator ones and that a communal directory enquiry service should be established.

The problem, of course, will be to decide how to share the cost of such joint services.

It is not yet clear whether the Commission will lay down clear rules on the financing of switch-overs in its paper. It will certainly deal with the matter, but may decide to leave it up to member states to work out the details.

In the UK, British Telecom (BT) and cable companies have already come to blows over this question. Following liberalisation, BT, the former state monopoly, agreed to allow customers moving to new cable operators to keep their BT phone numbers, but refused to bear the full cost of switching over clients.

“We did not have a problem with handing over numbers,” explains Mike Corkery of BT. “But we did not see why we had to pay to make the technical change, when it was the cable companies who were benefiting.”

The industry watchdog, Oftel, sided with the cable companies, but was more or less overruled by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission which, according to BT, proposed a “much more equitable” allocation of costs.

The Commission's paper will also propose the setting up of numbering schemes to allow callers to pick international carriers by dialling an access code and look into the possibility of establishing a single toll-free or commercial number which callers could dial from anywhere in Europe. At the moment, for example, consumers in Belgium cannot get through to freephone numbers in the UK. “It is

very confusing for consumers - we really need to converge our number systems,” says the official.

Another question likely to be raised is that of policing the market. “We need to make sure that the body which settles disputes is independent and not run by the incumbent operator,” says Corkery.

Interested parties will be given a number of months in which to respond to the draft paper. Their comments will then be assessed by the Commission before it decides what kind of legislative action to take.