When a phone number transfer goes wrong
With VoIP telephone service growing in popularity, many people are finding that — once connected — the service is cheaper and more convenient than their old landline telephone. However, there are pitfalls, as one Portland, Ore., area businessman learned.
Carl Townsend, who owns Oregon Professional Microsystems LLC, in West Linn, Ore., decided to switch his business phone line from Qwest to Vonage in April. As he tells it, the transfer did not go smoothly. On June 23, the line from Qwest went dead, but it was not established with Vonage until August 11.
“For almost two months we were without any business phone. If you called us, you got only a dead line. During that time we were paying DEX $163 a month for advertising on a line that didn’t exist. I had about 375 web pages out there with a phone number that didn’t work. We were losing about $1000 in business each week,” Townsend wrote on his Web site.
Townsend complained to the FCC, and said he was dissatisfied with the response he got. He blames Vonage for the problems transferring the line, and calls for Vonage to reimburse him for $8,604.57 in lost business.
I looked over the timeline he posted of events, the responses he received from Qwest, Vonage and the FCC, and I can’t conclude Vonage is clearly at fault, nor can I conclude Qwest is clearly at fault. I did find out who is clearly at fault, though.
To transfer a line to another carrier, a “letter of authorization” is required from the subscriber. In most cases with business lines, this authorization must be written, but in some cases, and in most cases with residential lines, it can be given verbally or by filling out a form on the carrier’s Web site.
Once the carrier to receive the line receives the letter of authorization, they present a purchase order for the line to the carrier with the telephone number. On the purchase order the carrier must affirm having a letter of authorization on file. The carrier then either responds with a confirmation (FOC) or a rejection (error). The carrier receiving the order is normally supposed to respond one way or the other within one business day. If the order is confirmed, the carrier then fills the order on the due date. If the order is rejected, the other carrier must make corrections to it and resubmit it, normally within 30 days of the original submission.
It’s not unusual for a purchase order to be submitted and corrected several times before the carrier confirms it. Usually this happens when the purchase order contains errors.
This is the sequence of events, as best I have been able to reconstruct them:
On May 22, Vonage received Townsend’s letter of authorization to transfer service from Qwest to Vonage. It then had its agent, XO Communications, facilitate the transfer of the line. (XO provides the physical connections to the public switched telephone network for Vonage, and therefore transfers phone numbers to and from other carriers on its behalf.)
XO sent a purchase order to Qwest for Townsend’s phone number which Qwest received on June 4, 2005. The order requested the number be ported to XO on June 23, 2005. Qwest responded to XO with a confirmation on the same day, and on June 23, ported the line to XO. These transactions are almost always sent electronically, though they are sent via fax on rare occasions, such as when manual adjustments need to be made to a line.
On that day the business landline went dead, but the telephone number did not ring to the Vonage line. Instead, calls to it resulted in complete silence, not even ringing.
It’s clear to me, having worked extensively with the transmission of orders such as this, that at the time Qwest sent its order confirmation to XO, that XO did not receive it. It appears that XO also did not receive, or did not act on, the notice of completion that Qwest sends after each order is completed. There are many reasons why this might happen, but it usually turns out to be a brief communications glitch.
In another CLEC (apparently not XO) orders which have not gotten a response within 24 hours are investigated, by having a representative from one carrier contact someone at the other carrier for a status report and to have any such notices resent. This helps to prevent situations like the one Townsend experienced. Carriers can also look up order status on a secured Internet application that Qwest provides to all CLECs.
In addition, highly sensitive orders of this type can be “hot cut,” where on the due date a representative from each company will call the other and manually go through the transfer steps, rather than letting the computers do it themselves.
Qwest’s portion of this transfer is, on the due date, to change the routing for the telephone number so that calls to it are sent not to its own facilities, but to XO’s facilities (the C order), and to disconnect the Qwest landline (the D order). Qwest apparently did this as requested on June 23.
XO’s portion of the transfer is, on the due date, to begin accepting calls routed to it for that number and route them onward to their final destination, Vonage. XO finally did its part and activated Townsend’s line on August 11. Even though calls to the line had been coming in to its facilities since June 23, XO was not properly routing them to Vonage until August 11, causing the dead air which callers experienced.
It’s clear to me that Vonage must take some responsibility for the actions of its agent, XO Communications. Whether that means that Vonage must pay for its customer’s lost business, I can’t say. I’m pretty sure that somewhere in Vonage’s terms of service is a disclaimer saying that Vonage is not responsible for customers’ lost business, assuming their lawyers are on the ball.
But to prevent this sort of trouble in the future, XO Communications should follow up on orders for which it doesn’t receive the expected response from the other carrier, and should do so in a timely manner, so that any problems can be corrected before they affect the customer. The timely manner part is the most important.
While it’s normal to wait several weeks for a transfer of phone number from landline to VoIP, mainly because of all the paperwork involved, it’s not normal for your line to go dead. This incident was entirely preventable.
