The number of people who have mobile phones is staggering. When the services first began, there were a limited number of providers, and people ended up with the one that was in their area, period. As more and more people started using cell phone service, more and more companies sprung up to compete for their business. In many areas of the country, it is nothing to see several competing towers standing in a row. People could pick and choose the service that provided the best price and plan for their needs and budget; they were no longer stuck with just one provider. The problem with changing from one provider to another for many people was the loss of a phone number that they may have had for years.

 

Mobile Number Portability

 

Thanks to an agreement with the mobile phone companies, customers were allowed to choose to take their phone number with them if they so chose. Mobile number portability (MNP) can be convenient for the customer, but not so great for the network providers. MNP can also cause some issues with VoIP calls as well.

 

Competition looks to be fierce as more and more traditional phone companies start to look into providing VoIP services. The more competition there is, the better the service must be. There is no way to improve on free unless the providers start paying their customers and how long could they stay in business doing that? Because they cannot compete with price, they must then compete with quality service instead.

 

Number Portability With Portable Softphone

 

VoIP is a Least Cost Routing (LCR) system, which as its name implies indicates that the call will be routed along the least expensive network. At one point, LCR networks only needed the prefix of a number to route a call, but that is no longer the case. Now, the networks will need a full number or IP address to route a call, especially if it is a mobile to VoIP call. Although it sounds complex, the process moves remarkably fast and the caller will probably not even notice a delay.

 

Along with being a LCR system, VoIP providers must also make sure that they are a quality system as well. Even if a company provides a service for free, they will not keep customers if the quality is not there.