FCC RULES Transferring home numbers to cell phones

By Nov. 24, companies must allow home numbers to be used for cell phones.
NEW YORK (AP) -- The coming freedom to keep your cell phone number when changing wireless companies has overshadowed another change also due this fall: the power to use your home number for your cell.
While phone companies see the government-mandated change as an unfair invitation for wireless rivals to steal customers, they say they will comply.
By Nov. 24, they must fulfill certain requests by customers who want a home or office number to become a cell phone number.
The new rules also require that cellular companies be prepared to transfer a mobile number to a land-line phone, though such requests are expected to be somewhat scarce at a time when millions of people have gone all-wireless at home and at work.
Anthony Loiacono, 33, a technology consultant for Synergy Architect in New York, already has all calls to his office and home numbers automatically forwarded to ring on his cell phone, even when he's in his office or apartment.
The next logical step, he said, would be to transfer his office phone number to his cell phone.
"Cell phone coverage is so effective now. They've made great strides, so the convenience of having one phone or one phone number outweighs the convenience of having a land line," Loiacono said.
Besides, he said, "I pay quite a bit for forwarding services, so it would save a lot of money to use my business number as my primary."
It's not so clear, however, how many of the nation's 150 million cell phone users will jump at the opportunity to move a wired number to a wireless phone. Many, especially business users, have already widely disseminated their existing wireless numbers to important contacts.
Still, the research firm Gartner Dataquest recently estimated that nearly 10 percent of residential phone customers would convert their home telephones to wireless if they could keep their phone numbers.
Forecasts aside, not all consumers or businesses will have that option right away.
Although all four of the local Bell telephone companies say they will meet the November deadline set by the Federal Communications Commission to comply with its new rules, the companies vary in how they interpret those rules.
The question essentially boils down to a debate over what constitutes a local calling area.
Telephone numbers have always been assigned according to geography, with the first three digits after the area code traditionally corresponding to a specific neighborhood or similar-size area known as a "rate center."