TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers

Re: Service Providers Recycling Phone Numbers

Scott Dorsey (kludge@panix.com)
22 Feb 2006 15:38:47 -0500

> In a little-known industry practice, wireless service providers
> routinely recycle former customers' phone numbers and give them to
> new customers without informing them of the number's history.

Little-known? This has been going on since long before I was born.
When I was a kid, one of the neighbors got a number that had previously
belonged to a defunct pizza parlor.

I believe that it used to be standard practice for the telco to age
out a number for about six months after disconnecting it, before
assigning it to a new customer.

So I have no idea why the author of the article thinks that things
should be any different for cellphones than they have always been for
landline phones. It's not as if there is an infinite supply of new
phone numbers.

--scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

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