If you're wondering why the heated battle over the issue of UK phone number portability has temporarily died down, that's because Ofcom has secured extra breathing space to prepare its defence. Vodafone has taken the industry watchdog, Ofcom, to the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) over its 'Telephone number portability for consumers switching suppliers' proposal which came out on 29th November 2007. Under this proposal, all UK operators have until 31^st March 2008 to reduce the time it takes to 'port' a number – ie switch an existing mobile phone number over from one network operator to another – down from seven days to two days. In getting a postponement, Ofcom claimed that, "Vodafone has raised a large number of detailed factual issues; and given the importance of the decision under appeal for the telecommunications industry, and ultimately for consumers, this makes it essential that Ofcom has an opportunity to respond full and effectively to the grounds of the appeal." It's actually not such a big deal since the data for its submission has simply been moved from yesterday [5^th March] to 28^th March. So it looks like Vodafone will have to conform to the initial proposed timescale for swapping numbers, anyway. Vodafone has claimed that swifter porting will increase the instances of 'slamming'. Slamming is where consumers are moved between one contract and another without genuinely given their consent to the change. This isn't the first time that the network operators have bleated about the cost of introducing a new service. Vodafone is currently saying that number portability will cost around £120 million not £12 million as Ofcom says. Back in 2004, Mobile Software Insight wrote, "Operators have a habit of exaggerating costs for services that they dislike. In Italy, operators agreed to a stolen handset database tracking IMEI numbers in return for ignoring number portability." Significantly that remark came in a story that 'churning' from one operator to another hadn't prove as much a disaster in the USA as operators such as T-Mobile had anticipated. Vodafone's defence is going to have to be pretty imaginative given that it operates quite happily in Eire where number portability takes something like two hours. The Irish watchdog, Comreg, recently denied that number portability had given rise to any increase in slamming. Vodafone might easily benefit from two hour number switching. It will make it far easier for IT managers to swap managers with an existing telephone number over to Vodafone and a Blackberry so they can get their emails and still receive calls to their old number.

The full Inquirer story ... here