Number porting to GV - my experience

[Judgeless]

Stewart, Thanks for the help.  I think I am going to try Callcentric.  Do you think there will be an issue porting it from T-Mobile?

[Stewart]

I'm not affiliated with Callcentric (or any other company), so can't make any guarantees, but their page at http://www.callcentric.com/lnp/ says that your number can be ported, and IMO their support is awesome.  Good luck.

[dhobi]

Just ported my land line from AT&T to GV by following the instructions in the first post. It worked very well, each porting step took 1-2 days. The longest part was getting the prepaid SIM card mailed to me, it took over a week.

Well worth the $22 to preserve my home number and to now have more features and flexibility.

I was given two direct numbers to the T-Mobile number porting which I'm posting here in case they are useful to other people:
1-877-789-3106
1-877-207-8169

[Judgeless]

I am having the worse luck on this.  It took me 5 weeks to port my landline from Winstream to T-Mobile.  Then found out I cannot port it from T-Mobile to Google Voice.

Yesterday I started the port to Callcentric.  After I started the port I got this email.

Note you would be billed according to the number service which you ported your number to. You can expect an average porting time of 15-45 days with most ports taking 25 days.

Now I have to wait another 3 weeks.  I do not understand how everyone gets this done in a couple of days.

[Judgeless]

Just ported my land line from AT&T to GV by following the instructions in the first post. It worked very well, each porting step took 1-2 days. The longest part was getting the prepaid SIM card mailed to me, it took over a week.

Well worth the $22 to preserve my home number and to now have more features and flexibility.

I was given two direct numbers to the T-Mobile number porting which I'm posting here in case they are useful to other people:
1-877-789-3106
1-877-207-8169

When I ported my landline from Windstream to T-Mobile it took 5 weeks and I spent about an hour each week day calling both Windstream and T-Mobile to make it happen.

I called T- Mobile at 1-877-789-3106 each time.  I gave all my info to the first person each time and then they transferred me to the land line porting group.  I had to give all my info again.  With Winstream there customer service department was worthless.  I filled a complaint with the FCC and a lady named Karen from Windstream called me and I used her every day to make sure all the fields were correct.  It took many many attempts for the two companies to make it happen.

[Judgeless]

This all started on Jan 14th. This was my first post when I started the process.

http://www.obitalk.com/forum/index.php?topic=1051.msg14746#msg14746

[dhobi]

Sorry to hear. Sounds like Windstream is at fault here and a pain to deal with.

[klrwaffles]

Got my t-mobile phone today to start the port.  So  I returned to http://www.obihai.com/porttutorial.html for instructions, and noticed the "sanity check".  For some reason, I didn't notice this before.

So, my 763 number is getting the Ooops! This number appears to be from an area we don't currently support.

I'm inclined not to believe this.  I did a check on a different mobile number on 763 and it said it could do it.  So area code shouldn't be an issue.  And when I did the check within my google account, it gave me both errors listed in the sanity check:

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

I don't want to loose my number (I can just transfer it back to my land line if needed).

So what does the Obi forum think???

The port from centurylink to tmobile seems to be complete.  I can now make and receive calls on my tmobile phone, and my land line is dead.

But google voice doesn't want to port my number.  I guess I'll give this a few days before I port to VOIP service and give up on google.  Either way, I'll be saving some money disconnecting my landline.

Now I'm on the phone to centurylink getting my dsl reconnected.  I thought I saw a question on what would happen to a dsl service if they ported a number.  The answer is, it gets disconnected.

[Rick]

Now I'm on the phone to centurylink getting my dsl reconnected.  I thought I saw a question on what would happen to a dsl service if they ported a number.  The answer is, it gets disconnected.

Right, you have to get your DSL separated from your phone line BEFORE you port your number.  It's called a "dry loop". 

[dhobi]

Now I'm on the phone to centurylink getting my dsl reconnected.  I thought I saw a question on what would happen to a dsl service if they ported a number.  The answer is, it gets disconnected.

Right, you have to get your DSL separated from your phone line BEFORE you port your number.  It's called a "dry loop". 

You will have to pay a bit extra for the "naked DSL line", depending on the local telco I think somewhere around $10 at which point you might as well keep a landline on the cheapest plan they have (metered plan). For the incremental cost you get 911 and a backup phone line that you can take incoming calls on and make calls when VOIP is down or in cases of emergency. You have to crunch the numbers and see if it's worth it.

[klrwaffles]

Now I'm on the phone to centurylink getting my dsl reconnected.  I thought I saw a question on what would happen to a dsl service if they ported a number.  The answer is, it gets disconnected.

Right, you have to get your DSL separated from your phone line BEFORE you port your number.  It's called a "dry loop". 

You will have to pay a bit extra for the "naked DSL line", depending on the local telco I think somewhere around $10 at which point you might as well keep a landline on the cheapest plan they have (metered plan). For the incremental cost you get 911 and a backup phone line that you can take incoming calls on and make calls when VOIP is down or in cases of emergency. You have to crunch the numbers and see if it's worth it.

I'm figuring this out now..   I'll have to get comcast and centurylink to do battle for my business.

The sad part is I can't get my number to port to GV anyway...which was the goal.

[klrwaffles]

I took advantage of the T-Mobile SIM Activation Starter kit for $2.99 with free shipping. Since I had T-mobile in the past, I should be able to use an old phone for the temporary porting process. (Thanks Jimates for the heads up)

Now I am waiting for the SIM to arrive. Once I get the SIM, I'll activate and contact GV to port the number, preferably on a Friday or Saturday to avoid any business calls that could chew up my 10 minute T-Mobile starter.

Well, I am STILL waiting for the T-Mobile SIM to arrive, 9 days later. Perhaps it was a scam. I sure hope the treatment Judgeless received is not the normal now for porting.

Anybody have any experience converting Landline/DSL to NAKED? How did it go? Any gotchas to watch for?

Did you ever get your number ported?

[Ron_in_Jax]

Well, just got mine ported over from at&t landline to tmobile prepaid to GV.  Started monday morning and finished Wed momorning.
A couple things.
First of all, I had an activation kit laying around from some prepaid phones I had bought last year.  I had bought the phones very cheap and flipped them on CL... kept the kit and free refil that came with them.
So, if u have an activation kit already, no need to buy one.
Secondly.  I did NOT activate the kit/#. I didnt even open the kit, then I called tmobile and told them I wanted to port my at&t landline to tmobile prepaid and I have the activation kit right here in front of me, unopened.
The csr took my landline info and then my sim card # and then my activation # and my cell phone imei #.  I then put the sim card in my phone and within a minute I got a text telling me my tmobile # was 904-xxx-xxxx which was/is my home at&t #.

She told me I could still receive calls on my prepaid fone but couldnt dial out until port complete.

It was kinda weird in that my home phones and prepiad cell phone both rang that day when someone called my home #.
The next day my house fone went dead and prepaid cell worked.  ported the tmobile # to G-voice and within a few minutes I got the pin # error, so I fixed that issue and again got a pin # error..
Waited a few hours and re-sent the pin info and all went fine...( someone mentioned potential problem with tmob when doing activation and poting out so close togehter).
Next day all good and on Gvoice.

[MrGadget]

Now I'm on the phone to centurylink getting my dsl reconnected.  I thought I saw a question on what would happen to a dsl service if they ported a number.  The answer is, it gets disconnected.

Right, you have to get your DSL separated from your phone line BEFORE you port your number.  It's called a "dry loop". 

I posted the question awhile back about the DSL/Landline scenario. My T-Mobile Starter-kit arrived about 2 weeks after my order. Now, I finally have all my ducks in a row and getting ready to perform the port. I have called CenturyLink several times (I don't trust them) to see what is going to happen when I Port my landline away from my DSL. I was assured by each one of the CSR's (including one that appeared to be knowledgeable) that the DSL would remain, but it would be assigned a bogus billing phone number. My DSL and Phone service would not be interrupted, and the port would take approx 1 week going to T-Mobile. I asked if the service would be DOWN for a week, and was told that the PROCESS would take a week, but the cutover would take 5 minutes or so, long enough to enter the data into the system and 'trigger' the change.

So, now what do I do? Is my DSL really going to get disconnected or will it remain? Who can I talk to at Centurylink to make sure it doesn't get DQ'd? Now that the ducks are lined up, I hate to pull the trigger and lose my Internet service.

As far as the Sanity Check at GV, it currently only works for Mobile numbers, as far as I can tell. The check says that my Landline is not able to be ported to GV, but I can get GV-Lite. So, I assume if I first port to T-Mobile, I will be able to Port to GV, and the sanity check should then pass muster.

What am I missing here? Is the DSL disconnect FUD or a reality? Can we trust the Sanity Check for current Landline numbers or wait until they are Mobile before checking? Obviously, everyone can have a different experience in this process, some will behave as designed, some exceptions to the rules, and still others will have nightmares.

I am glad everyone is posting their nightmares, but we really need to hear more success stories too.

thanks

[Judgeless]

quote]I am glad everyone is posting their nightmares, but we really need to hear more success stories too.

I am very analytical and do a lot of reading before jumping into something like this.  My lack of understanding of how everything works burned me.  Here are some rules I learned.

1.) Google voice will only transfer numbers from cell providers.
2.) Moving your Landline to a cell provider does not guarantee that you can then port that number to Google Voice.
3) Go to http://www.telcodata.us/search-area-code-exchange-by-ratecenter-state?ratecenter=elyria&state=oh and enter your city and state.  If Bandwidth.com is not listed under your NPA-NXX you will not be able to port it to Google Voice form a cell carrier.
4) Never cancel your landline or cell line number before the port is complete.  Your original account will be closed after the port.
5) If you have DSL on the same account as the number you are porting it will stop working when the port occurs.  I ordered a second DSL line in the house with a new account before the port to keep the service going.

Hope this helps others.

[MrGadget]

3) Go to http://www.telcodata.us/search-area-code-exchange-by-ratecenter-state?ratecenter=elyria&state=oh and enter your city and state.  If Bandwidth.com is not listed under your NPA-NXX you will not be able to port it to Google Voice form a cell carrier.

What do you mean? "If bandwidth.com is not listed under your NPA-NXX"
I don't see bandwidth.com listed under any entry, anywhere. If a landline is ported to a Cell company (i.e. T-Mobile), then GV should be able to port the number from the mobile carrier (T-Mobile). Correct?

I have Qwest/CenturyLink for my Landline/DSL, it is listed in the report, and in the dslreports as an RBOC. Also, the T-Mobile verify site allows a transfer from my current landline to mobile service.

5) If you have DSL on the same account as the number you are porting it will stop working when the port occurs.  I ordered a second DSL line in the house with a new account before the port to keep the service going.

Is this fact or your experience? Who was the original service provider for your DSL/Landline? Did they tell you in advance that your DSL would go dark and you needed to order a second DSL line?

...it's in the details.

[Judgeless]

If a landline is ported to a Cell company (i.e. T-Mobile), then GV should be able to port the number from the mobile carrier (T-Mobile). Correct?

That is not correct.  My landline that I had for 20 years was listed as portable.  I moved it to T-Mobile.  I then went to Google voice and tried to move it from T-Mobile.  Google Voice gave me the error that they could not transfer the number.

Is this fact or your experience? Who was the original service provider for your DSL/Landline? Did they tell you in advance that your DSL would go dark and you needed to order a second DSL line?

This is what I read and this was my experience.  Windstream was my DSL/Landline provider. When my landline was transferred to T-Mobile my DSL went dead.  I read this was going to happen so I ordered a second DSL line and move my home network to it before the old line went dead.

You are right, it is in the details.  Based on what I read it seemed like and easy deal.  Get a pre pay SIM, transfer your landline, and then transfer the number to Google voice.  That did not work out for me.

[MrGadget]

So, if your Landline-come-mobile didn't transfer to GV, what step are we missing to validate GV will accept the ported number? What is the deciding factor if a number will get ported to GV or not? The Sanity Check only validates MOBILE numbers. It would be a shame to give up your landline, and then find out that you are stuck with a mobile-only service.

On the DSL matter. I am trying to cover every angle here. Talked to several Centurylink CSR's, also talked to an installer, all seemed to be saying the same thing -- The DSL will remain intact, and the number will take about a week to port to T-Mobile. Check , double check, triple check, let's hope they do their job correctly!

Still gun-shy about the transfer from landline to Mobile to GV portion of this process. What other factors go into deciding if GV will accept a ported number or not? How can we perform due diligence on this process? 

[Stewart]

What other factors go into deciding if GV will accept a ported number or not? How can we perform due diligence on this process? 

You can never be certain.  IMO, you should check with other VoIP providers to confirm that they can port your number, so it will have a good home if GV doesn't come through.  You can check Callcentric here http://www.callcentric.com/lnp/ .  You might also contact support at Anveo, VOIPo, etc. and ask if your number can be ported.

[MrGadget]

You can check Callcentric here http://www.callcentric.com/lnp/ .  You might also contact support at Anveo, VOIPo, etc. and ask if your number can be ported.

Thanks for the heads up. Sounds like a solid backup plan if GV fails to accommodate my needs. Just something else to do in my 'spare' time.

I assume the vendors you mentioned have similar features to GV. I especially like the 'follow-me' feature, ring all my phones until I pickup. I am primarily eliminating my office desk phone (always forwarded to mobile), but allows me to make reliable outgoing conference calls (no international) from Speakerphone and DECT phone. Trying to keep it low/no cost, if possible.