Phone Operators running Cartel - transferring no's

[Guest jonathanscottlee]

I'm sure that most of you will be aware of this by now...

You want to upgrade your phone to the latest Windows Mobile 5 (or whatever) and you see the perfect phone. Your contract is nearing the end and you wish to upgrade to a new phone with the same mobile phone operator... However, you also want to port over your number. Unfortunately, the mobile phone operator will not allow you to do it. I've heard various excuses but does anyone have the definitive on this?

May be mobile operators have formed an unofficial cartel (definition: "A group of producers who enter a collusive agreement to restrict output in order to raise prices and profits"). Has anyone considered this?

What do other people think? Is there a good reason why mobile operators are not allowing number porting on the same operator to happen? If there is enough input, we can get the mobile phone regulators to investigate for us:

http://www.ofcom.org.uk

Any comments?

[Guest dazza12]

I've never had a problem with this, but I might be misunderstanding your point.

Whenever I've upgraded, it's been on the same number, meaning it doesn't need to be ported.

If I've been near the end of the contract, enough to actually give my notice, the mobile operator in question generally offers me a similar deal in order for me to stay.

[Guest chucky.egg]

Upgrading means keeping your existing number and contract, porting means taking your number away (to another network). Those two are mutually exclusive.

I suspect that what you've found is that the upgrade deal you've been offered is not as good as you'd hoped. If you're with Orange you're in good company.

Shop around for the deal you want and go back to your network and see if they'll match it on an upgrade. They might not, so you'll need to decide whether it's important enough for you to move to another network and port your number.