The local cellular carrier up and switched from TDMA to CDMA so all of my
older phones are useless. At the same time the land line phone company
ticked me off so I went through a big major hassle of porting the land line
number over to the cell phone company.

Prior to porting the number the cell phone company said that a Nokia 5165i
phone would be fine to use with their service. A friend of mine had one and
was actively using it on their very own towers. So when I got the phone
number ported over, my friend and I traded phones and had the carrier do an
ESN change. They had no problem putting his phone number on my other CDMA
phone. But then when I gave them his Nokia 5165i phone to put my number on,
they refused despite having previously told me that it would work.

Now they say that the Nokia 5165i phone is not compatible with number
portability of all things. They want to get me to buy a new phone that
doesn't even support analog fall back, and doesn't fit any of my
accessories. In other words, I can't use the docking station that makes all
the extension phones ring when the cell phone rings.

Are they feeding me a bunch of crap just to try to sell me a new phone? Or
is there really some substance to the Nokia 5165i not being compatible with
number portability? I don't see how the phone number really can matter to
the model of phone. But, I guess they are assigning me a secondary "mobile
identication number" which for some reason is different from my ported phone
number. They don't think they can program the two numbers into the phone.
But why not?! Hasn't a MIN number always been part of programming the NAM
settings on any cell phone? And why does the cell phone need to know the
number that is dialed from elsewhere to reach it? Wouldn't it just use the
mobile identification number to identify it on the wireless network
regardless of where the calls come from???

-Jeff




› See More: Models that support number portability?