[VoiceOps] How to assure LNP accuracy as a small ITSP

[April Jones]

Hi Carlos,

This depends on how you port. Are you acting as a facilities-based LEC with
access to NPAC and tools like PortPS? In that case, it's (somewhat)
straightforward to find LNP rules from carriers you're porting away from. A
Google for "Teliax LNP Rules" for example brings up our LNP business rules
that describe how to obtain a CSR or submit an LSR. Replace Teliax with
$carrier and you might be surprised by the results. Surprised, as in, going
from zero to LSR sent with CenturyLink took almost two full days...but
porting from Bandwidth CLEC took almost no time at all since they publish
their LNP rules and processes in an easy-to-find manner.

My experience has been, the more internet-oriented the company, or the
smaller the company, the easier it is to port numbers out. Some carriers
like Level 3 are large, but internet-oriented, and so their LNP tools and
portal make LNP very easy. Not to rag on CenturyLink, but as a tiny
carrier, I had to submit 3 separate LSOG-type forms for a simple port.

Just to put it out there, ATIS offers the NGIIF Contact Directories. It
only requires an email to register and gives you access to *some* LNP (and
repair) contacts: http://www.atis.org/ngiif/contactdir.asp

If you're porting via 3rd parties (Carrier does the porting on behalf of
you, and your customer) this gets difficult. Porting without access to LNP
portals or CSR information can be brutal. In this case, I'd echo Matthew
C.'s comments, get a phone bill (or way better, a CSR) from your end-user
and submit it along with your LOA.

CSRs are king, some carriers just don't offer them at all, others darn-near
require them to port out (which, by the way, requiring a CSR to be obtained
prior to a port is against the rules) but as you said, you can get
incorrect CSRs from LECs with outdated or otherwise silly records.

One last thing, I'd really encourage all carriers to publish accurate and
updated information in the NGIIF contact directories and publish accurate
LNP business rules...and make them easy to find :)

LNP is inevitable, might as well make it as easy for the next LEC as you'd
want it easy for you.


> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Carlos Alvarez <caalvarez at gmail.com>
> To: "voiceops at voiceops.org" <voiceops at voiceops.org>
> Cc:
> Date: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 20:11:02 +0000
> Subject: [VoiceOps] How to assure LNP accuracy as a small ITSP
> Without any access to directly verify phone numbers, we run into quite a
> lot of issues and rejections because of erroneous customer info that
> doesn't match what the carrier has.  What do some of you do to assure the
> highest possible accuracy and success?
>
>
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