So Vodaphone have implemented a system without profound and rigorous scrutiny and cannot be sure that benefits of such a system exceed the cost?

In other news, the civil 'servants' and ofcom combine to protect their future salaries at BigMobileCo: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/23/telecoms.regulators

The Isle of Man - a much smaller market, often used as a test bed by the UK - has been in the "process" of implementing a centralised number system for at least two years now and there is still no end in sight. Either it is a lot more complicated than OFCOM are suggesting, or it is far too easy for the incumbents to hobble the whole process in order to cling on to their advantage. Obviously, I couldn't possibly comment as to which of the two I believe to be the case!

I would not be at all surprised to see the UK go the same way and, indeed, with vodaphones comments this seems to have started already.

I worked with a Telco (who was part of the Voda group at the time) when number portability was introduced, but in another European country.

It was a fairly simple project and now people can move their numbers around within a few hours, or mostly minutes. The numbers are managed by a central database so there are no call charges passed around.

I didn't realise this still hadn't been done in the UK. I can't believe we're so far behind and being ripped off again!

... it was possible to do a similar thing with domain names and hosting. You buy a domain name (phone number) from a registrar, and it's yours for as long as you renew it. You can map the domain (number) to any hosting (network provider) of your choosing.

But there are loads of reasons why I guess that's not practical.

The real reason is that Vodafone has solved the tromboning issues thus saving several million a year whilst still raking it in from other providers.

The longer the current solution is in place (and other providers don't find solutions to tromboning) the longer Vodafone has the upper hand...

No, the call *setup* process uses 3 different networks, the call itself will be routed as efficiently as possible.

If you are on O2 & called by another O2 number you will end up only using O2's network for your incoming call but the process of finding where your mobile is will result in charges payable by the incoming calls provider network (O2 in this case) to 2 others (it won't charge itself of course!).

Is as fast and easy as it is supposed to be (at least with Orange). I've moved my number a few times and it takes about 5 minutes max, the person on the phone says it could take up to an hour but usually only a couple of minutes.

Its another way to lock customers to your network, people now have so many contacts and people ringing them all the time that it would be impossible to let everyone know that you have changed numbers. So they stick with their current network. Bastards.

Although I know many of my friends simply don't realise you can number port. I've had the same number since I first got a mobile phone and people are like how do you do that? Duh. Ask them.

New SIM card, new number ... basics!

You can already do this. UKreg, and I guess other registrars, lets you manage the nameserver records for your domain (you can even change the IPS tag if you want to move it to another registrar), and various free services allow you to manage the nameserver entries for your domain.