number portability

i am the guy who asked a question a few weeks ago who lives in New York with
have a flat in Central London who just moved a few hundred yards away. I
need to retain the number we have had for fifty years and naturally BT won't
cooperate.

I had OneTel in the UK and they make it pretty impossible to contact them,
though I am sure they will transfer the number for me if the request comes
through a VoIP service

As was advised here, I can sign up to Vonage in the UK and THEY NOW CONFIRM
that I can bring my router over to New York and connect it up here in series
with my US Vonage router and pick up all my calls to my old number from New
York

However they report problems with number portability. They say they do not
know when these will be resolved. Does anyone know what is going on or when
I will be able to do this with Vonage or whether there is another VoIP co in
the UK I can do all this with AND bring my telephone number with me? Or
isn't this a possibility in the UK yet? (If so, how do I maintain my UK
telephone number and prevent BT from giving it out to someone else?)

 

news.rcn.com expressed precisely :

I do not believe anyone does number portability for VOIP yet, there is
no requirement on anyone to do it and I am sure no one has set up the
process.

 

Gradwell do number portability from BT - see:- http://www.gradwell.com/voip/

London numbers are in the range available for port.

 

Colin Forrester submitted this idea :

I stand corrected. Thanks for the info.

 

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/numport/mod/

basically there is a requirement to "do it" irrespective of technology
etc. There was an interim ruling to that effect last November.

Phil

 

You can make a ruling that the sun mustn't shine at midday, that isn't
going to make it happen..!

Ivor

 

You can make a ruling that the sun mustn't shine at midday, that isn't

Although I agree with you that BT would try to make things as difficult as
possible to do this, I have to report that in New York the same thing
happened and all the Telcos were pretty much immediately forced to comply.
The problem in England is that BT can stall anyone any length of time they
want before implementing this service. Lord knows how Gladwell managed to
do it, but they must be picking up a gigantic amount of business now if
they are the only company which lets you use VoIP service with your old
number while others only promise to let you do this at some unspecified time
in the future. I am already in contact with their customer service (which
responded to my enquiry immediately Colin told me about it) and am certainly
signing up with them as soon as is conceivably possible!

Let's see how easy this is in practice.

 

So do Voipfone. They email you an Excel form to complete for the
process.

Oldie

 

Does anyone know if there is any difference between Gradwell and Voipfone?

The latter seems to offer various options for users such as lower cost
mobile phone usage using your mobile phone number and their system. Not
sure I believe this, though it looks reasonable enough: "They all use clever
tricks that enable Voipfone to set up your call for you then call you back -
instantly"

And they SEEM to be trying to replicate the skype service in some
unspecified way. the bit of their site which tries to explain this
http://www.voipfone.co.uk/FP_Voipfone_For_Residential_Customers.php seems to
be exceptionally confusing to someone like me who has been using VoIP for
sometime now and who also uses skype if it is blurring the distinction
between the two. Or is it adding a service?

 

It's Gradwell actually. It all depends on who supplies your VoIP company
with backhaul. Magrathea will port 020 numbers pretty easily. If you want
to port anything else, you have to pay [on every incoming call] per-hop
from the area code of the number you're porting, to London. Be aware that
that last paragraph is a wild guess.

If it was as easy as you think it appears to be, everyone would be doing it!

 

It's Gradwell, Gladwell was one of the people who designed the Delta Wing.

They can do it because they pay for the transit of the call to london
(which is why it is only available locally to London).

There are other providers that support this eg. VOIPtalk.

 

Did anyone else see that from the end of this month the list of area
codes supported by voipfone for porting is increasing.

http://www.voipfoneuserforum.com/about318.html

Looks like a ruddy great long list of codes, sadly only covering one of
the numbers I want to port. (home one not work one).

Of course if Gradwell will be offering the same service, I think I'd
rather spend my money there (even though afaict the voipfone service
costs only £2/month).

 

Sorry, my mistake, a quick sort through the list and I found it.

 

Voipfone's mobile callback service works very well. I have used it
several times. What happens is this:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. You call Voipfone on a London number from your mobile.

2. The number is always engaged (so no charge), but by calling it,
Voipfone discovers your mobile number. You clear the call.

3. Voipfone calls you back on your mobile a few seconds later.

4. Your mobile rings. You answer the call, and get a new dialtone from
Voipfone.

5. You dial the number you want to talk to. Voipfone connects you to
that number.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You finish up paying for the call from Voipfone to your mobile, plus the
call from Voipfone to your other party.

The process is a little cumbersome, but can save quite a bit of money,
especially when you want to call an overseas number from a UK mobile.

The residential customers page is simply talking about a free
introductory offer to the Voipfone service, and has nothing to do with
Skype or Skype-like services.

 

(so that wouldn't necessarily work from my US mobile: though clever, it
might defeat the very purpose it was designed to achieve? I must check on
this though, it does sound like a good idea which could work as my US
mobile firm does charge a fortune for international calls)

 

Actually my line is an 020 number and voipfone does look like the more
useful service if it works, and cheaper too if all I want is to preserve the
fairly small number of calls which still come through to my old London
number?