As of March 14 you can switch cellphone providers and keep your phone number. No wonder companies are playing nice.

Have you noticed that your mobile-phone company has been acting nicer toward you lately? Kind of creepy-nice, with a touch of fawning? Not nice enough to forgive a month's billing or anything, but fairly pleasant for an entity that usually just sends you an itemized list of why you owe it money. Maybe you've received a glossy insert with your bill, or—as in my case—a message sent solo in its own envelope. What's going on? Why has the senior vice president of a national company written me to speak of camaraderie and loyalty, and to remind me that per-second billing means I never have to pay for a full minute when I've only made a 12-second call?

Oh, I remember. March 14 is coming, known as the Ides of March in the cellphone business (at least I assume it is, if anyone in the industry has a dark sense of humour). March 14 is the day on which Canadians get the right to keep their phone number if they switch providers. The inability to do that—the fact that a consumer previously had to obtain a new number and then individually tell dozens or hundreds of people and organizations of the change—has long been a big factor in companies retaining their subscribers. You have to be pretty freakin' angry at a company to willingly take on a miserable task like that.

Not anymore, though. You get to take your phone number and run across the street and sign up with another big company that'll probably piss you off sooner or later, so much so that you might even go do it again. All that hassle costs those companies money and plays havoc with shareholder expectations. It's not that they're worried you'll discover there's a dramatically better company out there (there isn't, don't waste your time); they just don't want to go through all the paperwork and expense of winning over a customer to replace you. That's why I know that when I get a warm-and-fuzzy letter from a corporation, all it really translates to is, “Our records show that you've been paying us about $90 a month for our wireless services, and we'd just like to say that it would be just great if you continued to send us about that much, on the same schedule. Thanks.”

So although I don't think I'd go so far as to call it the dawn of a golden age for phone owners, there might be a few enticing offers out there from companies trying to woo you or keep you. That's why they're all being nice and behaving themselves. Except Telus, of course, which recently made a huge public-relations misstep by offering porn-by-phone subscriptions. (See commentary, page 18.) The service was cancelled after some loud and high-profile protests that—in light of March 14—could have resulted in a big loss for Telus at the box office. This is not the time to alienate customers.

Actually, I want to stick with the Telus porn thing for a moment, because it is a rare thing to witness the birth of such a truly stupid idea. It's epic.

Think about it. Someone had to propose the concept. Maybe it was a bright young executive who rode the subway in Japan and peeked over some salaryman's shoulder to see what he was watching, or perhaps a few guys from senior management were in the process of closing down a bar when one of them joked that the phone company should compete directly with the cable companies by offering nudity. Somehow, other executives were convinced of the wisdom of this ploy and then—despite the risk of controversy that most publicly traded companies try to avoid—collectively disregarded the moral issues, assigned people to work on the project (is there a job title like director of prurience?), and launched it. It's difficult to imagine how that happened in a modern corporation.

However, Telus's quick reversal of policy means that I don't have to strike the company off my dance card for the post–March 14 cotillion after all. I happen to have just five or six months left on my current phone contract, with a rather minimal penalty of $20 per month for early buggering-off, so I am a prime target for a slow waltz followed by a seductive offer from all the mobile-phone companies.

And—freed from the nuisance of changing numbers, and knowing that all the companies charge similar rates—I'm going to make my decision based on the telephones available. Whoever's got the most practical gadget will win my loyalty, for between one and three years, anyway. Then we shall all go dancing again.