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The problems described here apply primarily to calls to or from new or newly ported telephone numbers (wireline, wireless, VoIP) where you may encounter the following situations:

  1. Someone is trying to dial your TBB line (whether local or long distance) from another provider (Bell, Telus, Rogers) and gets a network busy tone or another error. However, other people with the same or another provider may be able to dial your TBB line successfully !

  2. You are dialing a number from your TBB line and you get a network busy tone or another error. Similarly, you or someone else can dial the same number from another phone line (different provider - i.e. Bell) and the call goes through successfully!


The issues in both these scenarios are related to the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and applies to all Providers (POTS, Cell, VoIP, etc), and NOT ONLY to Primus.

  1. Try dialing with the seven (7) digit number as well as the full ten (10) digit number.

  2. You can always attempt to dial the number as a long distance number (prefix with a "1"); which may incur long distance charges.

When you do encounter DIALING errors, first notify the service provider from which you are making your call, and tell them exactly what you are dialing. They need to get their technical dept to verify the routing - the CSR should not give you a "It's the other company's problem"... It might be, but your provider needs to verify their routing first!


DETAILS
The PSTN works with country codes, area codes, and exchanges. The USA and Canada have country code 1, and join together to assign area codes and exchanges through the Numbering Plan Administrator organization (see »www.nanpa.com/ and »www.cnac.ca/ ).

In simple terms, when a new exchange is created, the new exchange's info must be provided in databases (DB) to exchanges (CO) - all over North America. When a call is made, the originating CO looks up the DB to route the call over appropriate Trunks to the correct destination CO.

Compounding this is that since particular numbers can now be ported, it is not ony the Exchange that needs to be in a DB somewhere, but also the last 4 digits of the number!

When either new exchanges are created, or a number is ported, the process of updating the databases is cumbersome and is prone to (human) error; there are thousands of numbers added every day. Furthermore, not all databases get updated in sync. So sometimes you can call a new number from a Bell line, but it won't work from a Roger's cell phone!

In summary, for new numbers (or ports), don't expect to have all calls to or from different providers working asap - give it a few days. If the issue persists, call the (originating) provider to determine what the routing problem is (before calling the destination provider).


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by canoe See Profile
last modified: 2005-10-20 17:53:59