This number portability is going to be very interesting once it becomes reality.

When one considers the hard economic times that are ahead of us, one has to realise that people are going to be trying to save at every chance they get.

Prices are going up all around, but salaries and income are heading in the opposite direction, so things like making phone calls and getting the best service from your mobile provider are going to be very critical for people like me who depend a lot on telecommunications to survive and earn a living.

Just this past weekend, I was in a little town called Ramble in Hanover. At the house I was staying, there was no television, which meant no cable, which meant no sports. The situation also meant that I had to rely very heavily on my phones if I wanted to keep abreast of what was happening.

Jamaica, strengthened by the return of Chris Gayle, was playing Guyana in the Caribbean T20 competition for the right to play Trinidad in the final; Liverpool was playing Norwich, and with a win, they could move up the table; and among other things, the Australian Open was in progress. For someone who hosts a sports talk show and who is a big sports fan, it was potentially going to be a very challenging weekend.

Radio offered me some relief when it came to the cricket, but in terms of the British Premier League, I wanted to see how Liverpool was doing, and radio doesn't exactly offer you constant updates. In desperation I turned to my Digicel Blackberry and tried to surf. I waited for several minutes while that little circle on the screen kept going round and round and round, but nothing else was happening. I turned to my LIME phone and saw that it said GPRS instead of the usual EDGE, so I put it back down and kept waiting for the page to download on the other phone.

surprised

After what seemed like an eternity, I returned to my LIME phone and typed in soccernet.com, hoping against hope that I would get better results than I was having from my Digicel phone. I took a deep breath, largely expecting similar results, but to my extreme surprise, not only did the page download, it did so at an alarming speed. So while I was still waiting for the Digicel phone to download, on my LIME phone I saw on soccernet.com that Liverpool had won 5-0, went to BBC and got some news updates.

I eventually surfed cricinfo.com and got updated on what was happening in international cricket.

All this time, the other phone was still 'downloading'. I had always had faith in my LIME phone but never 'tested' it outside of Kingston, so it was with a sense of relief that I went on the following morning to follow the match between Manchester United and Tottenham, and much to my chagrin United found a way to come out on top, despite the information before me on my screen telling me that Spurs were having the better of the run of play.

Digicel isn't really helping their cause either, with all the issues surrounding their new voicemail system that now directs every call you make straight to the voicemail service. It's ridiculous.

With this in mind, it makes you wonder what will happen when number portability becomes a reality. Who will most likely benefit from the expected shift from one network to the other? Yes, Digicel remains the bigger, more popular network, but I feel the really smart people will start to think twice, about whether they are necessarily better.

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