[Asterisk-biz] Porting Fees

[Peter Wemm]

On Wednesday 29 June 2005 12:34 pm, Daryl Sanders wrote:
> I have seen mostly a one time charge of around $25. I would
> personally stay away from anyone wanting to charge a monthly fee.

Exactly.  Equally disturbing (to me personally) are companies that build 
this sort of thing into their monthly fees.  If they have a high 
customer churn rate, then they dont recover their porting costs.  Or, 
if you're a long term customer then you end up paying for it many times 
over (or worse, paying for the churn).  The same goes for "unlimited" 
plans that have the low-usage customers paying for the high-usage 
customers that haven't hit the limits on the "unlimited" plans yet.

I know that many customers don't get past up-front fees, but still, I 
personally would prefer to know that a company that I'm dealing with is 
making a reasonable profit at each step of the way and not likely to 
evaporate into a bankruptcy court hearing.  Especially if they're 
holding my ported home number.

That's why I like (for example) one of Teliax's plan models where I can 
pay by the minute, pay by the DID and pay for special things like a 
porting fee or an hourly support rate for truly special support items.  
At least, I *hope* they're making a profit at each step of the way.

> On 6/29/05, Matt <mhoppes at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> > Does anyone know what a "Standard" porting charge is for porting a
> > number to a phone company (as the VoIP provider?).   IE.. is it
> > normally a recurring monthly charge for each ported number?   Is it
> > normally a one time port charge (for administrative work, etc)?  
> > If so.. how much... what has been everyone's experience here?

-- 
Peter Wemm - peter at wemm.org; peter at FreeBSD.org; peter at yahoo-inc.com
"All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5