Build a better local number porting experience with PortControl

If there is any one thing that the telecommunications industry could unanimously agree upon – it’s that local number porting (LNP) is a pain point for everyone. It doesn’t matter if you are large carrier, small carrier, or a company that just relies on number porting to support your business – you know that the LNP process has a high failure rate, and for requests to take days or weeks simply isn’t tenable in the year 2020.

With PortControl, we wanted to create a platform that redefines what service providers expect from a local number porting solution. We wanted to create a platform that removes needless swivel chairing between platforms and allows carriers to collaborate with one another and share information.

In this blog article, we are going to show you how PortControl can help your business streamline your port-in local number porting experience. Our examples in this article (and articles going forward) will focus on how to leverage our APIs and easy-to-use GUI to make your porting experience simply better – for yourself and your customers.

Porting a Number to your Network

There are several steps involved in the local number porting process, and this article will primarily focus on a very high-level overview, and what these individual steps look like within the PortControl platform. For more detailed information stick around for additional blog articles, or just speak to your favorite local number porting subject matter expert (SME) at Porting.com.

Check to see if the number is portable to your Network

Generally, the first step a service provider will take when someone is interested in porting a telephone number to their network/SPID is to check if they have the available coverage footprint (generally determined by a location routing number, or LRN) to support the number.

As a service provider, you can also opt to use our /API/port/proposal end-point with your current and prospective customers, and allow them to check number portability directly on your website or within an application.

See which carrier the numbers currently belong to

Next, using our Explore functionality in PortControl or the /API/number/search end-point, you are able to get real-time information on any local or toll-free number to find out who the current service provider is (as well as some additional NPAC data, 10 years of historical data on the number, and the current caller ID/CNAM value).

This will help you identify who you should be sending your customer service request (CSR) and local service request (LSR) in order to initiate the porting process.

Ensure you have a trading partner profile

Trading Partner Profiles are simply exchanges of information (often formatted as Microsoft Excel documents or a PDF) that include local number porting rules and operations for that particular service provider. Some carriers (especially RBOCs) have lengthy requirements that you must meet in order to port a number from them and access their systems; other carriers simply exchange TPPs and consider the exchange the only formality necessary. PortControl currently has trading partner profile information for dozens of service providers, with additional providers and more robust data being added weekly.

Submit an LSR to the losing carrier and get FOC’d

As of the writing of this blog article, there is no support yet in PortControl for submitting and receiving customer service requests (CSR) and local service requests (LSRs); however, support for both of these functions will be released beginning in Q2 of 2020 and throughout the rest of the year. We are planning to have PortControl support API integrations into RBOCs (AT&T, CenturyLink, Verizon, Frontier, etc.) as well as use custom automation to ensure that external carrier LSR systems are integrated.

If you are interested in becoming an early adopter of our RBOC e-bonding functionality, let us know!

Create your records in the NPAC database

Once you’ve waded your way through any rejections/jeopardies provided by the losing carrier and you’ve been provided your FOC date, now it’s time to create your official NPAC subscription records. This is easily done in PortControl, as the system does most of the heavy lifting and logic for you – you only need to enter some phone numbers, select your due date, and enter an (optional) custom project ID.

Note: you can skip steps 2 & 3 if all of your numbers are portable, as PortControl will return each carrier for the numbers that you are attempting to port. Soon, you will be able to include step 4 (CSR/LSR) in this process as part of one unified workflow within PortControl.

Activate the number to your network

Once the agreed-upon due date has arrived between you and the losing service provider, and your subscription records (SVs) are all aligned and authorized, you will be able to activate the numbers to your network. This can easily be done on a per-number basis if you want to test some numbers before migrating every single number over. The system also has a one-click bulk activation option, to make activating your Order simple and fast.

Getting creative with PortControl

The above workflows are all completely automatable. We currently have many customers who utilize our APIs to do cool things, like:

• Automate the onboarding/letter of authorization process by using an e-signature service such as Adobe Sign or DocuSign to programmatically collect LSR information and submit the port request directly to PortControl for handling.
• Scheduling daily or weekly jobs query each number or block that they own to ensure that their customer-facing inventory is kept up to date and accurate.
• Perform local number disaster recovery by using our APIs to bulk-update LRNs belonging to different tandem providers
• Use a Microsoft Teams/Slack bot integration that will instantly respond with the portability and current carrier of a set of numbers.

If you have any questions or ideas you want to discuss, please let us know at: support@porting.com. We would love to see the local number porting workflows you are building.