[Asterisk-Users] Semi-OT: porting numbers away

[gw at adcomcorp.com]

Hello All,
This is in fact some of the best information I have been looking for
regarding porting.

An example is this, I have my primary local numbers on BRI.  I also have
a number of toll free's with a normal ld provider.  What I am doing
right now is pointing my toll-free's to a teliax number.  I have been
very happy with the service Teliax provides, although I wish they were
not using cogent as I get about an 80ms ping from NY > Colorado.  

The thing here is, I am considering porting some numbers over to
teliax(212 numbers, premium 800), not my primary's, but still numbers I
wish to advertise(over 8k/year).  Naturally after advertising I would
always want to be certain I can maintain those numbers.

If for any reason, teliax were to have issues (bankruptcy, etc), what
would happen to these numbers that I may have originally ported?

In the case of toll-free, would it be possible to port those numbers to
another provider relatively easily?  

In the case of conventional numbers, would it be possible to port those
numbers to another provider, or even back to the local provider?

I do not know the legislation, but if a provider simply does not respond
to a port request, does it get automatically approved after like 30
days, or simply nothing happens?

The real question here is, if they were to have issues, how would there
upstream provider react?  Would they allow re-assignment of those
numbers to another downstream provider, or would they just dump them
into a pool and all of my numbers be lost? ( in my case level3 I
believe)

I currently ported my personal numbers to teliax, but that is not an
issue if something were to happen.  On the business side however, it is
an issue. 

Naturally no provider will provide a disclaimer that says 'if we go
under, you are protected', because it makes them sound flaky.  But in
the business voip market, this can be very important.

Of course I trust the local CO will never go under while I am in
business, but with any technology company, since they are not regulated
in the same fashion, does anyone have an idea to what would possibly
happen?  Being down for a few days is not the end of the world, but
losing a premium 800 number for example can be disastrous.

Of course I know the best solution, keep the toll-free on a normal
provider, but there are upsides to using teliax (especially now with
cidname), and it doesn't make much sense to pay for the same service
twice.  The locals can be an important thing though.  I think this is
one of the issues that is effecting the transition of businesses to
VOIP.  I myself have usually suggested against VOIP as a primary in the
business market because of these issues, and aimed more for a hybrid
approach as well, even when connected via T1 or T3.

Thr tough thing is, no company is going to reliably disclose whether
they are profitable or not, and that information can be key.  

On a side note, I have had customers go from Verizon landline >
cablevision > Verizon landline, apparently without too many problems. 
 
Also another off-topic question, does anyone know if it is possible to
port a teliax/level3 number away from teliax/level3?  Such as onto a
cell or to another level3 customer?

Regards,
Greg


-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-bounces at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of trixter
aka Bret McDanel
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2005 4:59 PM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Semi-OT: porting numbers away

On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 15:41 -0600, Rich Adamson wrote:
> > > So use call forwarding from the Telco, forward it to a VoIP DID, 
> > > if you lose the VoIP DID, change the forwarding to another number.
> > > 
> > 
> > I thought my local telco told me that if I were to do that, I would 
> > have to pay them LD charges for each call that came in to that
number.
> > 
> > Or am I misunderstanding what you mean by forward here?
> 
> Your pstn line will be charge the long distance charge "if" you 
> forward your local calls to an out of area number.

or have business service that pays per minute.  I worked for an ISP
almost a decade ago that had many residential lines with no services and
call forwarding enabled (total cost less than $10/mo) to use to increase
their dialup numbers.  They forwarded to the main dialup number in the
hunt group.  Largely they were placed at customer sites (in exchange for
discounted service - nondialup customers).  We had 99 forwards enabled,
and becuase they were residential lines local calling meant no
additional cost.  Not a very nice thing to do, but hey after 12 years in
business that isp is still only one county large.  Kinda tells you
something about that ...


-- 
Trixter http://www.0xdecafbad.com     Bret McDanel
UK +44 870 340 4605   Germany +49 801 777 555 3402
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http://www.sacaug.org/ Sacramento Asterisk Users Group