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Number porting to GV - my experience

Started by chaiwan2000, June 16, 2011, 11:20:56 PM

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billdz

Yes, you may be right about the taxes. 

I already have my Obi 110 already set up with GV on SP1 and Callcentric on SP2.  I had my home phone forwarded to my GV number to take advantage of GV voice mail and email transcription.  Last step was going to be the porting, which I thought would save me $30 a month (I had been paying $55 a month total, $30 for phone plus $25 for internet).  So I'm just saving $10 a month for now, will revisit once the promo price expires (scheduled to expire in a few months but I've heard AT&T will usually extend if asked).

What I really could use is standalone high speed internet for less than $43 a month.   

ricklawpsu

I just successfully ported from Time Warner >>> T-Mobile prepaid >>> Google Voice.

Very smooth and fast once the process was actually initiated. When I first attempted to activate my t-mobile sim, I got all the way through and received this message:


"We're sorry, we're still working to process your activation. Please wait a few moments and then
try navigating to another web page. You should receive a text message to your device when your
activation is processed.
Laptop Stick and Netbook customers, please check your connection manager to make sure you
are connected to the network. If you are not connected, please click on the Connect button to reconnect.
If you still see this message please call T-Mobile Customer Care at 1-877-778-2106."


Message didn't really seem like a confirmation so I used the T-mobile chat to ask if it went through. They assured me that it did. After 3 days, I checked the 1-877-778-2106 number and there was no record whatsoever of a port request for my Time Warner Landline number.

I started the sim activation process again and got a confirmation email from T-mobile immediately and within 6 hours a T-mobile rep called me to confirm the port request. He said that Time Warner requires this call to confirm the number transfer. I think this probably sped up the transfer.

The next morning (Day 2) I got a confirmation text but the Prepaid phone could call out but not receive calls.

In the morning on Day 3: I had full use of the Prepaid phone. I called 611 and changed my PIN over the phone. I, then, initiated the Google Voice transfer. Received confirmation emails and an "OOPS" email asking for my T-mobile account PIN. I revised the request by entering the PIN and the last 4 of my actual SS. That cleared the error.

Day 4 morning: Google Voice transfer complete. Email confirmation received.


Lessons learned: (1) Make sure you get email confirmation all along the way.
                       (2) T-mobile now gives you the option to port your landline directly during activation instead of getting a temporary number first.
                       (3) Your T-mobile account # is 1+ your phone number
                       (4) You do not need to add minutes to your phone...T-mobile gives you 10 to start

chartbear

I've been using obi 100 for some time now mainly for long distance. Was using an Att conventional land line for local phone service with my decades old phone number.  My dsl modem bit the dust so I decided to drop the land line and go to ATT Uverse for Internet (which I think is "dry loop").  When I cancelled the land line the CSR said they would "hold" the number for a month after I asked if I could port the number to Google Voice.  Looking at the OBI instructions for porting, I consulted the link to T-mobile and it says:

"Please do NOT cancel your other wireless or landline account until the requested number has been activated on your new T-Mobile phone."

Does this mean I won't be able to port to T-mobile and thus no porting to Google Voice?


Rick


lhm.


Yes.


Unless you reinstate your old # along with your AT&T service and then start the port to T-Mobile.

chartbear

Thanks for your responses.  Guess I'll just set up my cell number with Google voice and let friends and family know.

ingobike

I want to port my commercial cell number to GV
I have already ported my land line to my wife's GV account.  I first ported it to Tmobile and then successfully transferred it to GV.
My company has authorized the porting of my ATT corporate cell number.
GV currently says I can not port it.
Tmobile says I can port it.
If I port it first to a personal Tmobile cell phone, what is the likelihood that GV will allow me to port it to GV?

Thanks, Randy

Pepi

Paid the 20 bucks to have my landline piped over.  Worked for awhile and now it cuts out on outgoing signal.  If I use my second GV phone number it is fine.  Not really excited about porting  :-\

Rick

#168
Quote from: Pepi on February 13, 2013, 06:32:16 PM
Paid the 20 bucks to have my landline piped over.  Worked for awhile and now it cuts out on outgoing signal.  If I use my second GV phone number it is fine.  Not really excited about porting  :-\

That has nothing to do with porting.  I suggest you start a new thread in the correct section explaining your problem, after examining the settings for each account on your OBi, AND trying both lines directly from your PC.  If the settings match, and the PC calls work perfectly, then check the phone that is plugged into the OBi or if you're using different phones swap them.

Edit - just saw you did post this elsewhere.  Copying the answer to there.

euclidobi

Welp. I finally ported my number from TimeWarner -> Tmobile -> Google.

It took about a month, although it could have been done faster if I were more vigilant in pursuing the problems that came up.

One note about porting from TimeWarner to Tmobile. My port request kept getting cancelled. Customer service on both sides were absolutely 0 help. They both claimed the problem was on the other end. And neither could give me much info on why the request kept getting cancelled. After the 3rd cancelled port request and a lot of back and forth with both providers, I looked online and found something about the pin being the Time Warner customer code (previously, I had told Tmobile I had no Time Warner pin). So I tried one last time and gave Tmobile my Time Warner account number, and customer code as they appeared on my bill. About 3 days later, got a text on my Tmobile phone saying that porting was successful.

All in all, it cost me about $40 to do the port.

$1 for the Tmobile sim.
$8 to get my temporary cell phone sim unlocked
$10 to add some minutes to the phone so I could verify the number with Google voice
$20 to port number to Google voice

Plus the cost of the Obi202 and wireless adapter.

Still worth it to get as far away from Time Warner as I can.

mdo77

So my goal is to go Time Warner --> T-Mobile Prepaid --> Google Voice.

I signed up through the TMO site and got the number ported to time warner with no problem.  Now I go into google voice and ask to port the number and get the following message:

QuotePorting your mobile number to Google Voice is unavailable
Your mobile number can not be ported at this time.
- We currently don't support porting from your carrier. We apologize and are working on adding support for more carriers.

Meanwhile, I installed Google Voice on the T-Mo prepaid phone and connected it to my GV account with the initial number. What's really weird is that on GV's site it now shows the correct number but says it's a Sprint number, not a TMO...


Rick

Quote from: mdo77 on February 22, 2013, 12:47:30 PM
So my goal is to go Time Warner --> T-Mobile Prepaid --> Google Voice.

I signed up through the TMO site and got the number ported to time warner with no problem.  Now I go into google voice and ask to port the number and get the following message:

QuotePorting your mobile number to Google Voice is unavailable
Your mobile number can not be ported at this time.
- We currently don't support porting from your carrier. We apologize and are working on adding support for more carriers.

Meanwhile, I installed Google Voice on the T-Mo prepaid phone and connected it to my GV account with the initial number. What's really weird is that on GV's site it now shows the correct number but says it's a Sprint number, not a TMO...



I can't follow this.  You want to go from TW to T-Mobile to GV.  You signed up on T-Mobile and got WHAT NUMBER ported to Time Warner?  Or, do you mean you ported your Time Warner number to T Mobile?

Then, you say you installed GV on your T-Mobile phone (do you mean the app?) and connected it with your GV account with the initial number?  What does that mean?  Do you mean that you setup the T-Mobile PRE-PORTING number on your GV account? 


mdo77

OK. Sorry for the confusion. I'll clean it up.

Wednesday I started with a Time Warner number.  I ported that to a new T-Mobile prepaid account.  That port went through about 3:00 this (Friday) morning judging by the timestamp on the text message from TMO.

When I saw the port was completed this morning (around 6:30), I logged into my existing Google Voice account and went to start the second port process. When I put in the ported number (formerly TW now on TMO) it gave the carrier not supported message.

At that point, I thought I'd wait a few more hours before I tried again -- I thought maybe the systems needed to sync up or something and GV thought that the number still belonged to TW and not TMO.  I've tried a few times since then and it still gave that same error.

The TMO phone is an old android that I had so I installed google voice on it via wifi and hooked it into the GV account.  At that point on the GV screen the number of the TMO phone showed up in the GV Phones section and it shows as a Sprint phone.  Which it most definitely is not.

I was curious if anyone had a suggestion of what to do next.  Apparently GV thinks this is a Sprint number that it cannot port.

Rick

Delete the phone from your GV account.  Try again.  Google needs to see that the carrier has changed and that could take a day or so. 

mdo77

I guess I jumped the gun a little. Apparently the number was only half-ported from Time Warner at that point.  Outgoing calls were working fine from the mobile phone but incoming calls were still getting routed to the Time Warner phone.

As of this morning, the cell phone was getting the calls routed to it and I was able to finally start to port the number to Google Voice.

In all, it took about 5 days for the port from Time Warner to T-Mobile prepaid to complete.

Rick

Quote from: mdo77 on February 25, 2013, 12:20:03 PM
I guess I jumped the gun a little. Apparently the number was only half-ported from Time Warner at that point.  Outgoing calls were working fine from the mobile phone but incoming calls were still getting routed to the Time Warner phone.

As of this morning, the cell phone was getting the calls routed to it and I was able to finally start to port the number to Google Voice.

In all, it took about 5 days for the port from Time Warner to T-Mobile prepaid to complete.

That's why you need to test both incoming and outgoing BEFORE you start the next phase.

JeffW

Forgive me if the following question was addressed in a previous post -- simply don't have the time to go through 9 pages of posts on this issue.  I recently hooked up my OBi and would like to port my landline # using the "T-Mobile method".  When I check portability with the T-Mobile site, it gives the message that my landline # can't be ported.  (BTW, it gives a "No" on every number I tried).  My phone service is through Time Warner.

Question: If T-Mobile says it can't be ported, am I dead in the water?  Is there another method that might work?

It's not that big of a deal if I can't.  We rarely use our landline anyway (basically, just to receive telemarketing calls, ha-ha).  Which is why I got the OBi, since I'd rather pay 0$ for phone service.

CoalMinerRetired

I'm not sure there's a clear answer to your question one can give on here.  A few pointers, though.

One point is VoIP phone numbers have different regulatory rules for porting than landline numbers.  See here on DSL Reports for an old explanation. Note that was in 2005 and the FCC has since changed the rules to include VoIP numbers in "LNP", as I understand it not all of them and slightly different rules than apply to landline #s.

What I'd suggest is first, determine if GV works for numbers local to your telco switch. More exactly, local to the "telco switch" which serves your NXX prefix number (format NPA-NXX-1234). Search for bandwidth.com and google voice, and you'll get an explanation. Determine your NXX/prefix and telco switch from these two sources, 1 and 2.

If above looks doable, then see if there's an third party like T-Mobile that is the leapfrog provider you port your number to before porting into GV.

As you found out you can't go from Time Warner to T-Mobile. Can you port to anybody else? Are any of those anybody else entities that GV allows porting in from?  The somewhat opaque list of what mobile providers who can port into GV is here.

SteveG

I have a Time Warner land-line.  It is portable to T-Mobile and is then portable from T-Mobile to OBI from what I've read.  My question is at some point do I have to tell Time Warner I am dropping them or does the porting of the number to T-Mobile do that?  Thanks in advance...  Steve

JeffW

@CoalMinerRetired -- I went and checked Sprint's portability checker and my landline is reported as port-able to Sprint.  I probably should have checked that after my T-mobile attempt, but I assumed that the portability wasn't reliant on the carrier one is porting it to.  Obihai's support pages direct one to T-Mobile so I went that direction off the bat.  Anybody know why T-mobile won't port it, but Sprint will?

Since I have Sprint as my cell carrier, I assume they will likely help me port my landline to my Sprint account.  Anyone have experience doing this with Sprint?

@Steve -- when I looked through Sprint's FAQ on the porting, they mentioned that the transfer will automatically deactivate the number with your old service provider, but they made it clear that you do NOT deactivate your account until the porting of the number has been completed.  If your account with your old service provider is canceled before that happens, the number will no longer be available to transfer.  I would assume, then, that once the porting has been complete, only then should you cancel your account with Time Warner.