Comments on: Here by Popular Demand: Number Porting

By: Mark Sinila

Mark Sinila — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:22:30 +0000

I purchaesd Ooma in January 2009 in which i immediately paid the $35.00 to port my current phone number over. After more than a dozen calls to Customer Support and now being April 15th, I am still trying to resolve this issue.

Everytime I contact Customer Service I get the typical “run-around” excuse. Such as it is my current provider’s problem. When, actually I am friends with my current provider and they tell me they are waiting on Ooma. If not resolved by the end of April, I am cancelling my service. I hate to be a hard ass, but what does it take?

By: allan

allan — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 02:47:56 +0000

Hi, I have 2 questions, One if ooma would go out of business can we retrive the phone number? If I understand it correct if you have a copy of a bill a new carrier can re-port my number, but being ooma sends no bill what then? And then I see ooma is coming out with their own phones ,if I purchase an ooma now will the new phones work with the current ooma hub or will there be a new hub to match the phones?

By: VBob

VBob — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 01:52:46 +0000

Hi Lowell, I’ll ask our support team to follow up with you to check if we can support porting your phone number. We do support porting in most service areas throughout the United States but there are certain areas where we do not support number porting yet. Soon, we will be releasing a web tool that will check if a phone number can be ported to the ooma system.

If you are using ooma with an integrated landline, you might be able to remove certain features (like long distance calling) to reduce your bill to a minimal cost. Feel free to give our support team a call if you need assistance with this.

-Bobby

By: Lowell Varney

Lowell Varney — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:25:34 +0000

Sir; After a long period of time since purchasing your system with the promise of no more phone bills, and dropping long distance service from the phone company. My phone bills are the same and have been, since you can’t port my number as promised.
The service works well, but it seems the only porting done is on the west coast.
Please port my number and free me from the endless gouges that keep my phone bill unchanged.
Thanks
Lowell Varney

By: VBob

VBob — Sat, 24 May 2008 01:29:39 +0000

Hi Ben, the $79 cost of porting includes two main components: (1) the cost of transferring the number between phone carriers, (2) processing the number port. Most other phone and VoIP carriers provide free or low-cost porting because they make up the costs associated with porting through monthly subscriptions. Since the ooma Core bundle carries no monthly fees, we charge a one-time porting fee when transferring a phone number. That being said, we do intend to reduce the porting cost over time as we further optimize and automate the porting process.

By: ben manning

ben manning — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:39:16 +0000

$79 looks way beyond “cost recovery” to me. At $16/hr clerical plkus postage, should be $20 tops.

By: VBob

VBob — Mon, 05 May 2008 20:31:30 +0000

Hi Mike,

Thanks so much for your question. ooma has partnered with several industry-leading telecom partners to support number-porting in multiple overlapping service areas. In the unlikely scenario that one of our partners stops providing service in one area, we would try our best to transfer the number to another service partner without interrupting your service. We are dedicated to ensuring that our customers retain their numbers after porting their number to ooma.

Also, when reviewing the google article you mentioned, several blog authors referenced phone number holding/forwarding services such as phonenumberbank.com. It might be worth researching these services further to see if they fit your needs.

-Bobby

By: Mike P

Mike P — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 21:21:49 +0000

When Ooma “ports” someone’s phone number (from their existing service provider), don’t you actually “port” it to another CLEC who is agreeing to support that number for little or no monthly fee? How does Ooma decide which CLEC to port it to and can the Ooma subscriber pick one? What happens when that CLEC goes bust and closes down? Won’t people lose the number, as happened to subscribers of Google/Grand Central? See info at:

http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/20/Google-struggles-with-phone- number-for-life_1.html“

By: VBob

VBob — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:19:00 +0000

Hi Sam, you can port numbers associated with DSL services if you first disassociate the phone number from the DSL service (usually by requesting “dry-loop” DSL service). We just put up a knowledgebase article that includes more details. You can find it at:

http://cp-ooma.talismaonline.com/article.asp?article=261395&p=12040

By: Sam

Sam — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:44:52 +0000

I would like to port my number to Ooma. However, I think a landline phone number that is tied to DSL service cannot be ported. Is that true? If so, could I get the phone company (Verizon) to move the DSL service to another phone number and then port my existing number to Ooma?