For years now, the telecommunications industry has allowed customers another sort of choice, the ability to switch long-distance carriers on their home phones.

Last year, 15 percent of all cellular customers switched carriers, he said, and in most cases, they got new telephones.

Compared to this, keeping your phone number when you switch cellular carriers is a vanity.

If I like the Windows phones enough, might get me to switch carriers.

Why is it bad that consumers can't switch carriers easily?

Starting today, cellphone users in rural America will be able to switch carriers and take their numbers with them.

When possible, avoid checking luggage, in case you need to switch flights or carriers.

The policy, effective on May 3, allows a business to keep a particular toll-free number when it switches carriers.

Also, US users in particular could more easily switch carriers.

But 16 million consumers, an average of 44,000 a day, switched long-distance carriers in 1992.