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

[Peter Beckman]

Excellent detail, thank you Denver!

On Fri, 24 Feb 2023, Denver Gingerich wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 02:59:05PM -0500, Peter Beckman via VoiceOps wrote:
>> 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.

  Huh, this would explain a handful of customers who are roaming who have
  said they replied and it got approved. It definitely seems to depend on
  what country they are roaming in, and may even depend on the carrier they
  are roaming on, because I also have a handful of cases where they replied
  to the SMS and it did NOT go through, as the request was rejected as no
  response.

>> 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.

  It would be much better if customers who are OUTSIDE of Canada had a
  better, online-based process to approve a Port Out request. It is fine if
  customers are in Canada, but far harder when outside of Canada.

> 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.

  Fibernetics bulk-submits port requests at 10am EST daily. This is an
  annoying legacy-feeling delay, but at least it is predictable. ThinkTel
  and IrisTel CAN submit ports in an automated fashion, but the feedback
  loop is very slow. And like you said, through a US party like Bandwidth,
  we do not get a very good/reliable signal for when the LSP receives the
  Port Out request, and thus, if the customer is outside of Canada, and does
  not have their SIM, we do not have a way to communicate WHEN they need to
  call the LSP to approve the Port Out.

>> 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.

  Argh!

>> 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:

  Agreed. Bandwidth is consistent. The challenge is that they use IrisTel,
  ThinkTel, AND NOW Fibernetics. While the BW Notes was mostly reliable for
  IrisTel (PON IRISxxx) and ThinkTel (PON PORTSxxx), they rolled out
  Fibernetics (0Xxxx) without anyone in the BW Porting Team seeming to know
  how to handle resubmits, nor when Fibernetics submitted ports (IrisTel &
  ThinkTel are within 5-30 minutes of the below notice; Fibernetics is once
  a day at 10am EST; Sometimes challenging to write code to automate this
  process!!!).

  Bandwidth also requests FOC for 5 biz days out (won't do it any sooner,
  maybe a THinkTel Restriction?), whereas Iristel through Inteliquent allows
  for 1 biz day FOC Requested for Wireless.

> 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.

  It is absolutely useful and much appreciated. I have a call with Iristel
  later today to find out if going direct is a better value and would
  provide us with faster service.

  Cancelations of the underlying Canada port seem to take 24 hours and
  really slow down the whole process.

Beckman
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Peter Beckman                                                  Internet Guy
beckman at angryox.com                                https://www.angryox.com/
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