phonewise

Edit: Don't read this as a complaining rant about what I can do...but more of a commentary on why someone else owns my phone number. :)

Phonewise, I find myself in a fairly particular situation. That particular situation has made me realize a few problematic facts about phone numbers. I got my first cell phone and number in 2004. That number has been the way to contact me ever since, and to my understanding based on how cell phone numbers are assigned, it had never been a way to contact anyone else before me. The predicament I find myself in now is the fact that I seem to not own that phone number. I find that quite odd. Who besides me would be the logical owner of my phone number?

Since I spend my time working and traveling around the world I have assembled a small collection of sim cards from various countries. Using prepaid sim card plans seems to leave one in a fringe group of people without annual contracts and invariably extends to me the joy of far inferior service. I seem to have traded the ability to have local phone numbers around the world for first rate service. Though periodically irksome, that is a tradeoff I can live with.

Since I knew that I would not be stopping back in the US for at least six months I recently sought a solution to avoid paying monthly for something I cannot make use of. While trying to inform myself of my options I was notified in a memorably monotone voice by a remarkably uninterested phone company employee that if I didn’t pay for my phone for more than a month I would risk forgetting my phone number. When I proposed the idea of cancelling my phone plan altogether and holding onto my number until my return to the country the same uninterested phone company employee informed me that that was a sure fire way to forfeit my number. What was one to do?

A recap of the absurdity: I have just been told that I must pay a private company every month in order to not lose something that I plan not to use and that I consider to be my own.

Why must I pay a monthly fee to a company in order to maintain possession of something that is mine? The fact that I can change, or “port,” as the FCC website calls it, phone companies and keep the same number would lead me to the conclusion that the phone number does not belong to the phone company either. If “my” number doesn’t belong to me and seemingly doesn’t belong to the phone company I find myself concluding that it must belong to the government. In a democratic nation without any kind of state run phone company, why would the government own my phone number? Similarly, if that were true, why would I have to pay  a private company in order to not risk having it forfeited to someone else?

I want to own my cell phone number and do with it what I please. I didn’t really think that was too much to ask, but it sure seems to be. Maybe I’ll find a way to incorporate myself as a phone company to hold onto this series of ten digits that I seem so attached to.