Telephone numbers are very useful to individuals and businesses and
become part of their identity like a postal address. However, as the
law currently stands, the user of a phone number has no proprietary
right or interest in it. It belongs to the telco pure and simple.

People pay large sums of money for a "golden number" yet in a dispute
with the telco, they could lose that number at a stroke with no
compensation. I'm thinking in particular of the poster who ported an
old number from Orange to Vodafone PAYG and because she didn't use her
phone for over 3 months appears to have lost any claim to the number.

I don't know what other users of this ng think but I think we should
petition Ofcom to change the rules so that once a number is issued to
a customer, he should have some proprietary and inalienable right to
it.

--
Alasdair.