VOIP Tech Chat → LNP authorized contact question

Long story but a while back in order to get a company my wife works for out of a jam, I ported a group of DIDs belonging to her employer over to Vitelity for them, they're in my account since we're hosting their phone service for them.

Now I'd like to port those lines over to DIDforSale since their plans/terms are much more appropriate for their/our situation and it occurred to me that I'm not sure who the "authorized contact" is now. Since those DIDs are in my account, is it me or is it still the original party? I'd like to avoid having the LNP orders end up being refused because I have the contact information wrong.

Thanks,

- Phil

It might be best to ask Vitelity what they have on file, which hopefully reflects what their CLEC has as well.

When porting a number to Vitelity, they require an electronic signature online. Whose name was signed at that time?You have done careful backgrounding on this question, that has your wife's employer as an interested party?

Yes indeed. They apparently resell CoreTel's DIDs and I would go to them directly but I don't have enough origination business yet in order to do that. I've begun hosting for other businesses in the meantime but we're only talking about a handful of companies here... still a very small operation.

I've actually been using DIDforSale for awhile now and their setup is really geared more towards providing service to someone running their own switch where Vitelity is really more of a BYOD type of provider like CallCentric, etc. where you would register your ATA to them. DIDforSale does load balancing and failover, etc. and has been quite reliable so far. Don't get me wrong, Vitelity has been great too with a few outages early on but they seem to have more redundant servers now (a good idea since they appear to be Asterisk-based) and far fewer problems.

Now there's actually more to this story...

The company my wife works for had merged with another company a while back, they moved into the same office etc. for a couple of years but things didn't work out. So they parted ways, moved back to their own location and left their aging Nortel Norstar switch (which I was administering for them in addition to doing their IT consulting work) with the company they merged with and subsequently separated from.

Here's the sticky part... when they merged, they added their phone lines to the other company's pool and based on the signature required for the port order (and still on file with Vitelity), it would appear that one of the managers for the other company is still the authorized contact for their DIDs. While I wouldn't describe the relationship as hostile, the two companies aren't exactly good friends either, so I'm not sure how to go about getting the authorized contact info straightened out for their DIDs.

This would be a good example of how understanding the technical end of providing telephone service does not necessarily mean that you understand all of the legal and business implications on the back end with odd situations like this... yes I'm still learning here.

- Phil

TINLA but I would think that you have three broad options:

a) Get the manager at the other company to sign a form changing the authorized contact to be you. Check in advance from Vitelity as to what they would require.

b) Or, submit documents to Vitelity from where your wife works now indicating that you are now the contact person. Have signed by the owner or CEO, and corporate seal affixed. This is even easier if Vitelity already has the name of your wife's company associated with the account, even if the contact person was wrong.

c) Or ask your desired new provider for their advice....

In any event, having current invoices printed out from the Vitelity website should help too....

The original party authorized the porting of the numbers to your account. Now that they are in your account, you are the authorized contact person (unless you added the original contact to your account when the numbers ported over). Order the port using the information as currently listed on your account. Ports can be refused for reasons other than incorrect contact info. You'll just have to order the port and then have the new carrier research why if it doesn't go through.

DIDforsale's website says (c)2006 at the bottom

still trust them?

that's up to you but they appear to be tiny and unsophisticated which is a combination I don't like when it involves telco

your call... no pun intended - or was it memorex?

He says he's a current customer, which is perhaps a more important factor.

-----------------------------------------------

Nota bene:

The official government website of the State of Florida still says 2008:
»www.myflorida.com/myflor ··· ght.html

Hudson City Savings Bank (a very large bank here) says 2008:
»www.hcsbonline.com/

A Citibank site that says 2009:
»www.citibank.com/us/card ··· onal.jsp

The Carnegie Foundation says 2009:
»carnegie.org/

Greyhound Bus still says 2011:
»www.greyhound.com/default.aspx

-----------------------------------------------

So using the copyright date as a reason to avoid a business is a very foolish idea, as I see it.

Really depends on the company, and the last time they updated that specific page. I prefer a javascript function that just inserts the current year.

Copyright ©
<script language="JavaScript">var d=new Date(); yr=d.getFullYear();document.write(""+yr);
</script>
 

That made the most sense but I wasn't sure, especially since it was showing the old signature. I checked with Vitelity and that is indeed the case.

Now I need to get things set up so my customers can maintain control of their numbers instead of me...

Thanks to all for weighing in.

- Phil

I'm inclined to agree, especially since there have been a couple of times where the copyright date on our own website wasn't updated for several months into the new year.

I'm not 100% sure but it appears that Google penalizes the website somewhat for that.