Two years after the implementation of the number portability policy, why is it still so difficult to transfer the mobile network?

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On November 11, 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Regulations on the Administration of Number Portability Services, and required the four major operators to officially start providing services to the whole country on December 1 of the same year. Since then, Chinese users can also select operators based on the performance of operators' services, tariffs, network experiences, etc.

However, from a practical point of view, this kind of response to the voice of users, urging operators to further improve services and further activate the good policies of market competition, but once faced with the situation of landing difficulties - although major operators have expressed that they will actively support the provisions of number portability, but in the actual operation process of user number portability, they often encounter various rules and regulations, so that many times let "how difficult is it to transfer numbers to the network" on the hot search, and CCTV has criticized Changsha Unicom's number portability routine by name.

If it is difficult to say that the user number portability network transfer before, it is because the regulations have just landed, operators need time to understand the policy, staff training, technology upgrades, system docking, resulting in users encountering various problems in the process of number portability, it seems to be forgivable, we can also give operators time to optimize the user number portability experience.

So now that two years have passed, it is reasonable to say that operators should have straightened out everything about number portability, and users can also smoothly carry out number portability, but the reality is not so.

From the author's personal experience, at present, some operators still set up more twists and turns for users to transfer their numbers, and in the business docking of offline commissioners, salesmen are still violating some of the provisions that cannot be violated as clearly stipulated in the "Regulations on the Administration of Number Portability Services" - such as "delaying the provision of number portability services to users, interfering with users' free choice, and comparing publicity in the promotion of number portability services and related tariff schemes".

The following are some of the magical experiences encountered by my father when he transferred the number to the Internet before New Year's Day.

Before New Year's Day this year, taking advantage of the opportunity that his hometown is broadband into the household, his father also wants to transfer the mobile card he has used for many years to the network, and increase the mobile phone traffic quota with the broadband installation - after all, with the rapid development of the mobile Internet, even the father, who does not rely on mobile phones, is forced to integrate into digital life - after all, when others are accustomed to mobile payment for wage settlement, how do you not use it? What's more, under the needs of epidemic prevention, travel needs to check the health code, itinerary code, and the mobile phone card does not have enough traffic, which is naturally a very headache.

It is also based on this that I suggest that my father install broadband in his hometown while carrying the number to the network, so that he can keep the contacts for many years and have enough traffic for him to use outside.

My father followed my advice and began to transfer the number to the network, and realistically speaking, in the early qualification query process, everything was quite smooth, and the final query results showed that the mobile phone card that my father was currently using had a "collection" business that needed to be cancelled, and then the number portability could be transferred.

I thought that this matter could be ended at this point, and we could carry out number portability after canceling this business, but what we did not expect was that when we canceled this "collection" business, we experienced various twists and turns of self-movement.

When canceling this business, consult the mobile customer service, customer service said that the business hall can be canceled, but go to the business hall to handle, the business hall said no, you need to take the online manual service to handle it.

So we dialed the mobile manual service phone and asked the manual service to help cancel this business, but the mobile customer service feedback said that in the number portability network, they did not have the permission to cancel this business, and needed to transfer the number portability business line to handle various cancellation services, and transferred our business cancellation needs to the private line.

At this point, there is nothing to say, after all, people have no authority, and you can't blame others.

But then when waiting for the mobile dedicated line to be processed, it allowed us to experience what is called "high door difficult to enter" - every time the phone is transferred to the past, waiting for several minutes but no one answers, there is no way but to hang up, and then re-dial the mobile customer service to ask the reason - the mobile customer service explained that the user number portability demand is strong, but the private line carrying capacity is limited, need to queue up to deal with, and help us re-transfer to the dedicated line customer service.

After several times of this back-and-forth, the mobile number portability dedicated line service was finally dialed.

I thought that this "collection" business should be cancelled, but what I did not expect was that after we expressed the need to cancel the "collection" business of the private line customer service, the reply given by the special line customer service was: This business cannot be cancelled online, and the offline commissioner needs to handle it, and said that the offline commissioner will contact by phone within 24 hours.

Frankly speaking, the offline commissioner called very quickly, and within half an hour, he made a telephone contact, but his attitude was extremely bad.

Because my father did not know much about these business expressions, after my father called the commissioner, I expressed to the business commissioner on my behalf that I needed to cancel this "collection" business because I wanted to carry the number to the network.

But what he did not expect was that the offline commissioner said on his toes: he only spoke to the owner himself, and then hung up the phone.

There was no way, in order to cancel this business, I had no choice but to dial the offline commissioner's phone again, and my father personally expressed to her the need to carry the number to the network and cancel the "collection" business needs.

This time, the commissioner did not hang up the phone, but asked his father on the phone why he needed to port the number, and also compared the business between different operators, trying to prevent the father from carrying the number port.

After the father expressed his resolute need to transfer the number to the network, the offline commissioner said that to cancel the "collection" business, he needed to apply to the leader, and now (afternoon of the 31st) can not be handled, need to be after the New Year's Day to handle.

And this undoubtedly made my father's card need to stay on the move for an extra month.

This is the twist and turn we encountered in the process of number portability in order to cancel a "collection" business.

Of course, the last thing that needs to be explained is that after the New Year's Day, this business was also successfully cancelled.

At this point, although the result was finally achieved, the purpose was successfully cancelled, but the whole process experience was obviously very bad.

Here, Linzhang also wants to ask Mobile: Why is it so difficult for users to handle a number portability business in your company two years after the number portability policy has landed? Why can't we give users the greatest convenience and let users solve their needs in one stop?

Is it to retain users with all kinds of tossing and turning?

After all, from the data point of view, throughout 2020, the net outflow of mobile users is second only to China Unicom.

But the question is, can users really be retained in this way?