There’s a pretty long list of resettlement tasks when you move to a new community. You need new auto tags and a new driver’s license. You have to register to vote, get your utilities hooked up, put the kids in school.

But getting a new cell phone number may be one you can forget about for awhile. Many newcomers are finding they’re perfectly OK keeping the cell phone number they had back home, foreign area code and all.

You could guess that interstate migration is jump-starting a trend that wireless industry prognosticators have been foreseeing for years: the lifelong telephone number.

When Andrew Foster moved here from South Bend, Ind., to take a teaching job at Santaluces High School in Lantana, getting a new, Florida-based cell phone number was high on his to-do list. Thing is, he was in the moving process, meeting people and making new connections but still trying to stay in touch with folks back home who had his cell number saved to speed dial. «Before I knew it, I was giving out this cell phone number,» Foster said. «It got to be too late to change.»

There seemed to be no pressing reason to change. Increasingly, cell phone calling plans make no distinction between local and long distance. Customers in many U. S. markets are already accustomed to dialing 10 or 11 digits for all of their calls. On the other hand, changing your cell phone number usually calls for a tedious e-mail and phone call campaign to make sure everybody gets the news.

«I guess generally it’s been working OK,» Foster said. «I haven’t heard of anybody not calling me because of long distance or the area code thing.»

There can be downsides to hanging on to an out-of-state cell phone number. If you don’t have a nationwide calling plan (or a statewide plan if you’re moving from elsewhere in Florida), long distance and roaming charges will quickly overcome any perceived benefits.

Some cell phones get disoriented when they move to South Florida because they’re not programmed with the local system’s pattern of transmission towers. Verizon phones, for instance, must periodically have their «preferred roaming list» updated to make the best use of the local network.

And you may become an expensive habit to people who still rely on hard-wired land lines.

«If the majority of your calls are coming from other cell phones and long distance is included, it may not be an issue,» said Chuck Hamby, a spokesman for Verizon Wireless. «But, having said that, places like your child’s school or doctor’s office don’t use cell phones and they’ll get a bill for calling you.»

Though Hamby says cell phone migration «is not an issue for the wireless industry,» it may be a snapshot of the evolving relationship between people and their telephones and a platform for guesses about the telephone’s future.

The process of moving to a new community seems to emphasize the value of the cell phone as an all-weather, all-location primary communication device. Land-line phones, with that wire tether and the billing meter that starts every time you dial «1,» look much less attractive.

«We have [a land line] for dial-up,» connection to the Internet, says Foster. «We don’t give that number out.»

He may already have the last phone number he’ll ever need.

Rick Stone