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Voda NZ In Trouble Over Number Portability |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Tuesday, 17 April 2007 |
The New Zealand Commerce Commission has threatened the local Vodafone subsidiary with legal action if the telco doesn't let its customers port their mobile phone numbers claims a NZ newspaper.
According to this story , the Commission says it is not "actively
exploring that option" at this time, just ""considering what the best
way would be to go at this stage. It does point out that it is an
option available to it.
The argument is over Vodafone allowing is pre-paid customers to take their phone number if they churn from another carrier.
The
report says that the Commerce Commission's network access manager,
Osmond Borthwick, says the commission was surprised to learn that
Vodafone was going to "discriminate" against customers seeking a
pre-paid service when number portability was introduced at the
beginning of the month.
Rather than take the matter to
court, the Commission may elect to turn the matter over to the
"yet-to-be-appointed 'number portability enforcement agent'," says the
report.
Although on the face of it there seems plenty of good
reason for Vodafone to encourage people to bring their phone numbers
from other carriers, Vodafone appears to be afraid of losing post-paid
customers. It has not let its own post-paid customers keep their number
when switching from post-paid plans to pre-paid and letting customers
joining from rival carrier,Telecom, would allow customers to circumvent
this by switching to Telecom and then back to Vodafone pre-paid.
A
Vodafone spokesperson told the newspaper that pre-paid customers were
less likely to require number portability, but that the telco did later
plan to offer it to them. Neither telco has tried to use the newly
introduced number portability rules to try and poach customers., says
the reports.
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