I have switched through all the Telcos over the past 10-20 years.
For (1), yes. All M1, SingTel and Starhub charge the monthly bill once we received the SIM card. But our mobile number will be ported immediately over by the next working day. If they have problems delivering their mobile service, we can just call up their customer service hotline to ask for a fee waiver, which is usually approved if the problem lies on the Telco's side.
(2) The commercial agreement we enter with the Telcos of course is legally binding. But if the Telco did not provide the full mobile service which they charge the customers for, that is a "criminal offence" which amounts to "consumer cheating". That's why a lot of customers "short-changed" by rogue travel agencies filed police reports after the travel agencies did not fulfill their travel packages.
Lastly, if you read through the hardwarezone forum postings over the past few days, you will find that many forum members facing delays in the number porting have not been very demanding on Zero1, as many of us have been waiting patiently for many days for our mobile numbers to be ported over.
But if the whole porting process takes up more than 1-2 weeks and we are being charged by Zero1 despite not using the Zero1 sim card (as our mobile number is still with our old Telco), then it is right that the govt regulators such as the IMDA, police, CASE, etc step in to investigate the matter. (Just like SingTel, M1, Starhub always have to answer to the govt regulators whenever their mobile networks, fibre networks, etc breaks down)
Of course, I really hope that Zero1 will be a responsible Telco and not "short-change" their customers by charging them when they are still having difficulties porting their mobile numbers to the Zero1 network.
And as customers, we are still showing much goodwill to Zero1 by waiting patiently for them to sort out their problems. We are not expecting "first class" service here. We are only hoping to be treated fairly.