[VoiceOps] Wireless Canada Porting, the CRTC, and the Stupid Process

[Denver Gingerich]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 02:59:05PM -0500, Peter Beckman via VoiceOps wrote:
> In November 2021, without much notice to the industry AFAICT, the CRTC
> changed the process for Wireless Canada Ports:
> 
>     - Upon receiving a Port Out Request, the Losing Carrier sends an SMS to
>       the End User
>     - The End User has 90 minutes to reply affirmatively to the SMS
>     - If they fail to do so, the Port Request is automatically canceled

This matches what we have experienced.  This has caused us to have to re-submit several orders because the user wasn't aware of this requirement and wasn't watching their phone in that 90-minute window (whose start time we can't control, per below).

> For most Canada carriers I can find, they seem to charge you both to submit
> the Port Request, and then to Cancel the Port Request.

I am unaware of cancellation charges we pay, but new port requests (including re-submits, as often required per above) do cost us.  More on that below.

> Add to this what happens when the End User is NOT PHYSICALLY in Canada.
> 
>     - MAYBE the Canada Carrier is able to indicate when they send the Port
>       Request to the Losing Carrier
>     - Customer must be notified to start calling the Losing Carrier, but we
>       all might not know when the 90 minute clock starts/started
>     - Customer MUST call LSP to approve Port
>     - Sometimes they are on hold longer than the 90 minute window
>     - The SMS is sent from a Canada-only Short Code, so even if they can
>       receive it while roaming, the roaming carrier does not know how to
>       route the SMS destination back to the LSP for approval

I'm not sure about this last part - my experience suggests that SMS routing is based on the user's "SIM carrier", not whoever they're roaming on (unlike voice routing).  In particular, this means you can't use local short codes if you're roaming, which is what I've noticed anecdotally in my own travelling.  So in theory the short code message should make it to you, and your reply should succeed (though who knows how much that will cost you).

Anyway, it sounds like you do have some contrary experience, and I don't wish to dispute that.  I guess we haven't run into many people who are roaming but want to port out at the same time.

> Overall I give the CRTC an F for this process.

Due to my customers' experiences, I would make it more of a D.  While I agree there are huge problems, especially for operators like you and me that can't control the LNP submission time, customers of mine do like this verification step, esp. versus the US carriers they're aware of, which are much more prone to unauthorized port outs.

> What are others here doing for Canada Ports? Are the costs similar to what
> I'm finding, USD$3-6 per TN, USD$3-6 to cancel the order, then another
> USD$3-6 to resubmit?

We pay US$4 per TN, plus US$4 to re-submit, but AFAICT $0 to cancel.  We normally do these through Bandwidth, which charges us US$3 for our other (i.e. US) ports, as a point of comparison.

> Is there a carrier that does this extremely well? Must be automated too.

I'm not aware of one.  We have an account with one Canadian carrier, which we've repeatedly asked this question (i.e. about API access for port-ins), and they still don't have it.  However, we haven't tried all of them.  The usual suspects you could ask would be Distributel (aka ThinkTel, for business), Fibernetics, ISP Telecom, and Iristel.

> Is it just exponentially more expensive when the End User cannot gain
> approval on the first Request?

I don't know about exponential, but more expensive for sure.

> I'm also finding that getting a webhook or notification when the request is
> actually sent to the LSP is also difficult, and so notifying the End User
> of when to call is also difficult/impossible.

Yeah, this is tricky, since most big carriers don't handle Canadian ports themselves, and so it's a human poking at the real carrier's system, who then reports back to your porting request manually.  It seems that this causes the actual port request to be sent 24-48 hours after we submit it, which isn't super helpful for telling the customer when they should start looking at their phone for that 90-minute-expiry SMS.

While it's not perfect, we do appear to get a notification closely correlated with this event from Bandwidth.  In particular, when subscribed to porting updates by email (which are also available via webhook), we receive an email like the following approximately 5 minutes before the SMS is sent from the LSP:


From: dashboard-updatenotification at bandwidth.com
Subject: Note has been added. Customer Order ID: [order_id]

*** Replies above this line will be appended as notes to the order if applicable ***
*** Please limit replies to 10 lines of text or less ***
Note Added
port_in: [UUID]
Last Modified Date: [current time]
Note: Hi Team! Your order (PORTS[digits]) has been submitted to our vendor and has a requested port date of MM/DD. Updates to follow in 2-3 business days. Thanks!


I confirmed this today actually, as I had a friendly customer who was informing me about each step of the process, and I matched up the timestamps to see which events corresponded to their SMS receipt.

Anyway, I don't know if this helps, and can't say for sure that it happens every time with Bandwidth, but anecdotally it seems like it may be close to what you want (or as close as you'll get anyway).

FWIW, we know that Bandwidth normally uses Distributel (ThinkTel) for their Canadian ports, though it seems occasionally they use Iristel instead.  So this may be a(n API?) service you could get direct from either of those two.


In any case, we are very interested to know if you get anywhere with this, as we'd really like to improve the situation for our customers with Canadian numbers too.

Denver
https://jmp.chat/