[VoiceOps] Who do we call - 3rd plus party carrier issues affecting local customers

[Jamie Montgomery]

Greetings..

Looking for the proper way to identify a third party carrier..

We have had a monthlong ongoing issue with external calls into our switch with terrible quality. It's random, but it's calls to ported numbers into one of our CLEC areas. When an affected call comes in, it is reported as static or delay. We have obtained an audio capture of a couple of these calls from the ingress point of our TDM network, and the audio is severely delayed and choppy as if it was delayed within an IP network. We're assuming the call has been routed through an IP low-cost carrier somewhere. (Working with T-Mobile below, we found that their switches would route calls that originates and terminates locally in South Carolina through Washington state carriers.)

All of the calls with an issue come into us from a legacy ATT tandem, but not all of the calls from the ATT tandem are affected. We've been trying to get in touch with ATT for a month, and have recently spoken to some people with no resolution. We continue to call them daily. We worked with T-Mobile on issues with their wireless customers calling our CLEC customers experiencing this problem. The guys at T-Mobile were excellent to work with. (They reached out to their 3rd party carrier Inteloquent who had rerouted calls away from CenturyLink, which resolved calls from T-Mobile devices.) We're getting dozens of trouble calls a day from several of our CLEC customers on calls originating from many other sources (Verizon, local ILEC  landlines, etc.). We've explained to our customer that the trouble is not ours, that we're doing our best to track down the problem carrier, but we're been notified by our customers that we're going to lose them, regardless.

Our last idea is to file a complaint with the FCC, but that's leaving issues unresolved. My questions to the community are:

  *   What's the most effective way to zero in on the problem carrier  to troubleshoot the issue?
  *   What legal means do we have to empower somebody to support us in finding the issue?
  *   What would you do if your hands were tied like ours seem to be?
  *   (What other questions should I be asking the community that come to mind?)

My background is switching and some at work experience of the SS7 network. I'm of the opinion that I'm not the most qualified in our organization to engage the FCC or twist ATT's arm to work with us.. but no one else beside the on-point technician is making any effort. Internal responsibilities aside: How do we make the extra effort to keep our customers?

I appreciate the time you took from your day reading this.


Jamie Montgomery | Comporium

Network Facilities Engineering | Voice Network Engineering Associate

www.comporium.com

jamie.montgomery at comporium.com



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