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It's also worth remembering that number portability didn't happen on its own: incumbent telcos fought against it tooth and nail.

• matwood 6y ago
  Of course they did. Who wouldn't fight for a huge moat around their business? :) Number portability also helped unlocked competition between providers.
• g_p 6y ago
  Absolutely. Perhaps an angle for the current ongoing antitrust/anticompetitive behaviour investigations going on in the House? Incumbent telcos fought portability, but in the end it has become a "given". There's no reason OTT services can't also have the same - email is already federated. I could see issues around whether people should be able to "port" their email and still send using their old "From" address (not least SPF/DKIM technical aspects), but the ability to receive seems an obvious one that could be handled. The challenge for OTT services is that absent regulation to force it, if an email provider goes down, there's nobody to step up and continue to provide the relay service.