WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS Cell-phone customers get hung up on transfers

One analyst said the situation is worse than what had been expected.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
Many consumers trying to transfer their cell-phone numbers to different companies are encountering long delays caused by incorrect data, technical glitches and a growing backlog of transfer requests at wireless companies, industry experts said.
Two weeks into the federal number portability mandate, the transfer process, which was expected to be troubled initially, is underperforming even those low expectations, these people say. More than half of all transfer requests are requiring manual processing, adding further delays.
"It has been worse than we feared shortly before going in," said Roger Entner, an analyst with the Yankee Group, a research firm.
"We did a brief report saying there would be a rocky start," Entner said. "This would be way beyond rocky. The system is straining at all levels from the automatic porting to the manual porting, to basic breakdown of business practices."
Phone companies and wireless retailers such as RadioShack Corp. said many transfer requests are being processed automatically through computer systems and industry clearinghouses.
"The transferring or porting process is mostly taking about as long as we predicted anywhere between a few hours and a few business days," said Travis Larson, a spokesman for the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association. "We hope that every port going forward gets a little faster."
Longest delays
Experts have singled out one company -- AT & amp;T Wireless Services -- for having the longest delays and the most orders requiring manual processing.
"A disproportionate number are having problems with AT & amp;T," said Janee Briesemeister, a policy analyst at Consumers Union, which has been soliciting consumer feedback on its Web site www.escapecellhell.com.
"We have heard it's taking several days for AT & amp;T to release cell phone numbers and sometimes more than a week."
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission sent AT & amp;T Wireless a letter asking for an explanation of its problems and what it was doing to fix them. The company has until Wednesday to respond.
An AT & amp;T Wireless spokesman conceded that more of its orders had to be processed manually -- more than 60 percent -- than the 50-percent industry average. But he said the entire industry was dealing with the same glitches, which were expected.
"We have our issues and we are dealing with them, and the other carriers do as well," said Mark Siegel. "Our error rate is a bit above the industry at this point in time, but it's very early."
Got workers together
In the months leading up to number portability, phone companies assembled hundreds of workers in large call centers to handle transfer requests. They troubleshoot transfers with counterparts at other companies and industry clearinghouses.
A consultant who manages one such center for a phone company said his agents were spending as much as 45 minutes to an hour on hold to talk to agents at other companies.
"We are throwing more and more bodies at the problem to move the process faster," said Greg Douglass, a vice president at Cap Gemini Ernst & amp; Young in Irving, Texas. "Some of the carriers were clearly not prepared for the onslaught of" orders requiring manual processing.
Interestingly, excessive consumer demand is not the cause of the backlog. Douglass said transfer requests have been low most days and typically less than the 80,000 requests handled on Nov. 24, the first day of number portability.
Key failures
Douglass cites three key failures:
UConsumers and salespeople are entering requests with inaccurate names, addresses, etc.
UPhone companies' billing systems have incorrect data such as Social Security numbers for their customers.
USome carriers weren't prepared with enough well-trained agents.
Tying phone company computer systems together to verify and transfer numbers is bound to be difficult because they were never meant to be connected, said David H. Murashige, a Nortel Networks vice president.
"That's not how you set up your customer database," he said.
In most cases, the breakdowns have meant consumers are carrying two phones for several days as they wait for their number to make its way to their new device.