Number Portability

Number portability is the ability of users of telecommunications services in the United States and most other countries to keep their existing telephone number when changing from one local service provider to another. Under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, the implementation of local number portability (LNP) in the United States has caused some problems for telephone survey researchers. In the early days of wireline-to-wireline portability, both numbers associated with a porting request could be dialed successfully. When wireline-to-wireless porting was implemented, there were concerns that this would influence the ability of researchers and telemarketers to comply with the portion of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991 that limited calls to certain types of phone numbers, including wireless phone numbers.

In 1996, the U.S. Congress ...