[VoIP] Porting phone number, what will happen with the POTS line?

[Greg Blakely]

All companies have differing policies, but this is how we work it at the
small independent ILEC that I work for.

When a number is ported away from us, we receive notification that the port
will happen on a specific day.

The day of the cut, we program the number as disconnected, but ported.  At
that point, we don't even let you have dial tone.  It becomes a hot line,
going to a recording introducing the company, and asking the caller to stay
on the line if they wish to order service.

We don't provide dial tone specifically because we'd also have to provide
911 service.  And, if we provide 911 service, we have to assign telephone
numbers to those "dead" lines, and then we'd have to send that info to the
PSAP (public service answering point) so that they could associate the
incoming number with an address.

There are liability issues specific to the validity of 911 information that
our company is not willing to take on, to say nothing of having to cough up
telephone numbers for those dead lines, in an age where telephone number
blocks are hard to come by.

When we port a number from the cable company to our switch, we simply create
the number in the switch, and mark it as "ported in."  When the LERG dip
information is updated, the calls start coming in.  

Same deal for when we port in cell phone numbers to landlines.  

When we get a customer back (a win-back), their disconnected ported-out
number is first marked as plain old disconnected without being ported out,
and then immediately built as a new customer from scratch.

In any of these cases, ideally, the customer is without service for a few
minutes.  And, after years of doing it, the telcos are getting pretty good
at it.  The process is fairly seamless.




> -----Original Message-----
> From: voip-bounces at ckts.info [mailto:voip-bounces at ckts.info] 
> On Behalf Of Jayson Smith
> Sent: Friday, July 27, 2007 8:38 PM
> To: Voice Over IP Tandem for Analog Switches
> Subject: [VoIP] Porting phone number, what will happen with 
> the POTS line?
> 
> Hi all,
> 
>      As you know, we're switching to cable. We're getting one 
> phone line's number ported over, and the cable people are 
> scheduled to come Monday and set everything up. This 
> obviously means the number should be released on Monday. The 
> line in question is still active tonight (Friday) and I'm 
> just wondering what will happen. A phone line can't have 
> service without a valid number, right? So obviously at some 
> point they'll disconnect it. Will we wake up Monday morning 
> to that line being disconnected? We are served by Bell South 
> on a #5ESS. Will there be a live line but no dialtone, live 
> line and dialtone, but can't call anybody except 911, or 
> what? I've heard that phone companies have to let you dial 
> 911 on a disconnected line. Is this true?
> Thanks for satisfying my curiosity.
> Jayson
> 
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