The phone number porting process can be one of the most trying experiences in the telecommunications industry. However, Flowroute has a very experienced and dedicated porting team that solely focuses on the port orders that our customers submit to us. We provide “white glove treatment” for the duration of the porting process, walking the requests through each step to completion, giving them our undivided attention.
Here are a few helpful hints, listed below, that you may consider to make the porting process a better experience:
Preparation
You can check for number portability on our site before you start the port order process. Once you’ve verified that your numbers can be ported you are ready to start preparing for the porting process.
Keep in mind that here are several things that can stall the process. One of the most important things you can do is to take the time upfront to plan and prepare to ensure that you have the right information you may need down the road. We recommend that our clients reach out to their current service provider before they initiate the port to get the information they will need. This can really assist you in having a better porting experience. If we have all of the accurate information up front and can submit it to the losing service provider (LSP), the number of rejections goes down significantly and the process will move to completion much faster.
There are dozens of ways you can run into issues in the porting process. Sometimes the authorizing person may have left the company and that information was never updated with the LSP. The Flowroute porting team can’t really correct things like that on your behalf, so it’s important your account is up-to-date with the LSP.
The Flowroute porting team has established porting arrangements with other carriers. Working with smaller carriers typically means that we are working on a manual porting process and are emailing the LSP directly, and talking directly to their team. We’re often able to get more accurate information about a rejection and resolve it faster because we are working with a live person in many cases.
Setting your expectations
A common scenario we see is a client who wants to port numbers, and doesn’t realize that the carrier they’re using is operating through another carrier. They are using a reseller or another carrier to host some of the numbers that they have. It can add an extra layer of complication when we’re trying to figure out what information the carrier needs for reporting. We always recommend that if a client is interested in porting their numbers that they contact their current provider and let them know of their intent to port and request a customer service record (CSR) document. That will assist us in a smoother transition because everyone has the appropriate expectations and their carrier has the chance to give them the correct information that they will need to report.
Responding to porting team
Typically, the tasks that the Flowroute porting team handles are solely related to porting and port orders. Some tickets involve numbering as well if a client is requesting phone numbers that they don’t see in our inventory. They can submit a ticket to us and request those numbers. We’ll do our best to obtain the desired numbers on our customer’s behalf.
The porting team handles all the porting tasks on the back-end as smoothly as possible. There can be a lot of nuance that goes into the porting process (to say the least) even when it may look straightforward. You may think it’ll go smoothly and then it can go sideways for the weirdest reasons. In that case we may have to reach out to the end user and have the end user provide the correct name or communicate with their current service provider to change that name on the LSP’s system. There may be pending orders on the LSP’s account or it wasn’t cancelled correctly, and that can block the process from moving forward. Certain carriers will sometimes have features for accounts that prevent port-outs. Your current service provider may be providing you extra services on top of the phone service that you have on your account and you may not be able to port out the phone number until you cancel or unbundle the other service feature.
This process is very carrier-specific so it’s difficult to go over the broad spectrum of reasons why we get rejected for features because each carrier has their own stipulations and those can change over time.
Successful completion
The Flowroute porting team has an activate process to monitor when numbers flip over, and calls start routing to us.
Our system allows you to upload the number to your account and set up all of the routing and other items associated with getting the number up and running beforehand. Ideally, you’ll have the routing all set up and ready to go so on the morning of the port-over you, and the number will be assigned to your Flowroute account. Since you have the routing already set up, it should work well, and you will have successfully completed the porting process.
