Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by trollied 1207 days ago
It can be made difficult if you want to keep your number. Years ago I worked for a startup mobile operator. The incumbents didn't like the new threat, and did all sorts of shenanigans to stop growth, things like paying people to object to new cell sites etc. One of these things was releasing ported numbers on the last possible day. So, while you had your new device and SIM card, you didn't yet have your old number. The old operators legally had 30 days to release/transfer the old number, and would wait for 29 days before doing so. You'd be surprised at the amount of contract cancellations this would cause, with the customer thinking it was the new operator being useless. The legislation ended up being changed to a more reasonable timeframe because of this anti-competitive behaviour.
1 comments

What does that have to do with the physical SIMs, though?