To Some, You're Simply a Zero...
$5,000 for a five-zero cellphone number? Yikes! Sounds awfully like the dotcom days when cool domain names were in great demand. If I remember correctly business.com was bought for over a million! I paid only $25 for my Verizon three-zero number 3 years back.
I should hold on to mine since prices should go up even further when the cellphone companies allow us to switch providers while keeping the same number.
...among the 32-year-old Mr. Zampolli's most prized possessions is a growing collection of zeros, and not the kind having to do with any bank account. Like many people caught up in the status symbols of the digital age, Mr. Zampolli is obsessed with his cellphone numbers. Each of them -- 12 altogether -- ends neatly in two or three zeros. "I only want good numbers," says Mr. Zampolli, who hails from Milan. "What can I say? I'm addicted."
Telephone numbers ending in "00" or "000" used to be the province of businesses, or of the rich and famous. Companies and individuals alike would compete for them because of the obviously limited supply in any given area code. Many paid dearly to acquire and keep them.
...Some, like Scott Painter, have gone to great lengths to get exactly what they want. A "numbers freak," as he calls himself, the budding Santa Monica, Calif., custom-car maker was fed up with the random digits that fate had dealt him. So one day he dialed the cell number of his dreams -- one containing a total of five zeros -- and was thrilled to hear a voice at the other end.
"A guy picked up, and I just offered him money," says Mr. Painter. "He thought I was kidding, but we agreed on a price. I drove to his office before he could change his mind and paid him in cash." A few hours and $5,000 later, the number was formally transferred to Mr. Painter's name.
A Reuters story published today in the New York Times gives details of why cellphone companies are against the change that will let consumers keep their numbers (scheduled for November 2003):
,,,about 46 percent of U.S. mobile customers would switch to a rival operator in the year after the Federal Communications Commission rule takes effect. That compares to an estimated mobile customer turnover rate of 30 percent for 2002, the researcher said.