@Anonymous wrote:
Well the Oracles have spoken but I gotta think one ought to be the actual owner of a number/account to move a number to another number/account. That both names ought to be the same. Seems to be a little open to fraud/theft.
The porting rules were beefed up because of unscuplulous telcos, specificly in the US. The scam was, these lanadline telcos would port your number over to their service with the flimsiest of information. A couple of months later, the customer would be billed on another pricing structure, at a rate much higher than they agreed to. So regulations were put in place to make sure that practice stopped.
When Canada was able to do ports, the Canadian telcos carried over many of the same policies the US adopted, but also engaged in anticompetitive behaviour to make it almost impossible to port one's number on the first try. There was always some T that was not crossed. That made most customers give up on the the port in frustration and stick with their old carrier.
So new rules were put in place to make the porting process much more flexible. Though arguably more open to fraud, I believe the current porting system strikes a much better balance of conveince and security.
