Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
 ·DSL EXTREME
 ·InPhonex
| reply to dannykewl
Porting Out From T-Mobile Prepaid
Assuming that anyone who parks a number with T-Mobile prepaid will ultimately want to port the number to another carrier, here's an update on my experience so far with porting a number away from T-Mobile prepaid.
- I submitted a letter of authorization (LOA) to InPhonex (which I think of as the receiving provider) about 6 weeks ago.
- A week later, InPhonex said that T-Mobile had rejected the port request because the LOA did not contain an account number. I had never seen an account number for this prepaid account.
- I called T-Mobile and told them about the rejection. After much discussion about whether such a thing existed and several call transfers, they gave me an account number.
- I resubmitted the LOA with the account number to InPhonex.
- InPhonex has charged me for two months of service on this as yet unusable DID.
- After polling InPhonex a couple of times about the status of the port, they responded today. They apologized for the delay and said they would refund the porting fee. Their database says they are still waiting for an FoC date.
- I called T-Mobile's porting department. Their database shows that one day after I submitted the LOA to InPhonex, T-Mobile responded with a request for my PIN. They are still waiting for an answer.
- They thought the response may have come via email. But the porting department "does not have email capability". So they transferred me to the Wireline department.
- For the first time, I talked to someone who really knows what's going on. He said that when porting out a prepaid number, all T-Mobile really cares about is the PIN. I told him my PIN, and he confirmed that it was correct. But they need to hear it from Global. Maybe Global Crossing is an upstream provider for InPhonex?
- He asked for a provider number to call. I hesitated to give him InPhonex's customer support number, because I have never tested it. (All my communication with them has been by email.) And in any case, it wasn't clear that T-Mobile wanted to hear from InPhonex.
- So I asked for the number of T-Mobile's Wireline department. (I think they answer the phone with some other department name.) This is the number you need to know: 1 877 789 3106. The department is open 8 AM to 10 PM Eastern time, 7 days a week.
- I relayed all this information back to InPhonex, asking them to call T-Mobile. I await their response.
According to the very helpful T-Mobile Wireline person, communications between the parties are routed like this:
- InPhonex to Global
- Global to Syniverse (a third-party intermediary between carriers)
- Syniverse to T-Mobile
And back again.
So maybe when T-Mobile asked for the PIN, their request got translated somewhere along the way into a request for the account number, which is not what they wanted.
Tune in again for the next exciting episode... |
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nitzan
Premium,VIP
join:2008-02-27
·ViaTalk
 ·Comcast
| Sounds like the ball dropped somewhere on the InPhonex/Global Crossing field. T-mo has been asking for PINs for mobile ports for many months now - this is standard and InPhonex should have known about this and asked you for the PIN to begin with. Oh well... |
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PX Eliezer
Premium
join:2008-08-09
New Jersey
·Callcentric
·Optimum Voice
·callwithus
·voip.ms
| reply to Test99
It may be of interest to look at Syniverse's own porting procedures:
»www.syniverse.com/business-solut···tability
------------------------------
And it's ironic that a cutting-edge process should be so much based on sending Faxes. |
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Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
·DSL EXTREME
·InPhonex
| reply to nitzan
said by nitzan  :Sounds like the ball dropped somewhere As I recall, you posted a list a while back rating the degree of difficulty in porting numbers away from providers. T-Mobile was near the top of your list.
Is there more that I have to look forward to? |
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nitzan
Premium,VIP
join:2008-02-27 | T-mo used to be hard last year, but that was because porting from mobile to VoIP was still being negotiated between the carriers. We haven't had a single problem with T-mo since.  |
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Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
·DSL EXTREME
·InPhonex
| reply to Test99
My port from T-Mobile prepaid to InPhonex is complete. It took 7 weeks.
The people at both providers were reasonable to deal with. Each believed they had done everything required to port the number. But communication between them didn't work, leaving them in a deadly embrace, with each waiting for the other.
There seemed to be no mechanism in place that would initiate action to find out why the port wasn't happening. If I hadn't talked to both providers several times to find out what they needed, it's not clear that anything would have happened. |
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garys_2k
join:2004-05-07
Farmington, MI | I once had to settle an impasse sort of like that and the ONLY way I got it settled was with a conference call -- me and the two finger pointing parties on the line at once. That can be tricky to get everyone together like that, though. |
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Test99
Premium
join:2003-04-24
San Jose, CA
·DSL EXTREME
·InPhonex
| said by garys_2k :I once had to settle an impasse sort of like that and the ONLY way I got it settled was with a conference call -- me and the two finger pointing parties on the line at once. That can be tricky to get everyone together like that, though. Exactly. I would have liked to set up a conference call, but neither party wanted to wait on hold for the other to become available. |
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