Since the Telecommunications Act mandates local service competition, service-provider number portability is necessary to level the playing field. Geographic portability allows a customer to move from, say, the Northeast Kingdom to Brattleboro and keep the same phone number. In effect this gives customers a number for life, if they choose, regardless of where they move throughout the country. Technical or service portability means the user can keep the same number for all services and can be reached at a single number across media. The number can be reached on a phone at an individual's home, in his or her car, on another PCS phone, or the ISDN line in the individual's office.
Number portability enables users to switch vendors without switching numbers.
According to Bell Atlantic, LNP is now technically available, and Bell Atlantic plans to offer a permanent solution for true local number portability in all of its Vermont switches by the fourth quarter of 1999.