DID number portability - to and from BT

Hi everyone,
I'm wondering if anyone has any opinion or experience with this..
I'm thinking of porting a BT PSTN geo landline number (0208 prefix) to a new VoIP account at OVH [1].. and according to OVH they can port [2], hopefully that includes BT.. cool.. but, I was wondering if anyone had any experience with porting numbers *from* a VoIP provider - either to another VoIP provider, or back to a BT landline?
I don't have the OVH VoIP account yet, so I could always port to another VoIP provider, but I was just wondering about VoIP to VoIP porting and VoIP to BT porting.

It's my sister's number and it's an easy to remember number so I was hoping to help her keep it when she moves flat, maybe (one day) town, and maybe (one day) country.

TIA
DonP

[1] http://www.ovh.co.uk/telephony/
[2] http://www.ovh.co.uk/telephony/services_included/num...

EDIT:
I'm not so sure OVH can do porting yet - they said they can't in a forum post [3] - and link 2 above I got from Google and not through any links I could find from link 1 above.
Ok, I'm now considering sipgate.co.uk in that case.. I'm still reading their T&Cs but on the surface it looks like I may be able to port the number to them and not pay anything on a monthly basis (use it for incoming PSTN calls only) - there is a porting fee, and I'll be using another VoIP provider for outgoing calls (a betamax clone), so maybe I can use sipgate for free.
Worst case, porting back to a (new) BT line may be possible [4].

[3] http://forum.ovh.co.uk/showthread.php?p=38580#post38580
[4] http://www.velocityreviews.com/forums/t742402-number...

EDIT2:
I think I may have found the answer, in theory [5]:
"Geographic Number Portability Import enables the customer of an Other Licensed Operator (OLO), to transfer the number associated with their fixed telephony service from the OLO to BT. A telephone number which had previously been exported to the OLO from BT can also be imported."
and later:
"Previously exported BT numbers may be returned to BT, this service is not limited by agreements with the OLO."

So, the question remains: Does anyone have any experience of doing this?

TIA again

[5] http://www.bt.com/pricing/current/Exch_Lines_boo/123...

Edited by deleted (Fri 01-Jul-11 02:35:30)

A few years ago I worked in a company who did non-geographical numbers, the 0800's, 0870's and so on.

Porting was usually only from us to BT or from BT to us, we were not able to port to another operator as there has to be an arrangement in place and no operator, apart from BT, had set that up at that time (early-mid 2000's)

As with VOIP DID ranges, the numbers were issued by Ofcom to a specific company and I doubt much has changed in the world of porting since then. Some operators refused to let people port numbers, but then they were forced to.

You should be fine porting from BT to a decent VoIP provider. I work in the industry and we do many ports every day with little problem.

Being a proper telecoms geek, ovh's website offends me. They ask you to call them on 0207 xxx xxxx. The area code for London is 020 xxxx xxxx. Telephone companies should actually know telecoms.

I'd also recommend you take your number to a provider who is part of ITSPA: http://www.itspa.org.uk/members.html

This will offer you some protection. You can port between ITSPA members and if the provider you are using ceases service you can speak to another member and ask them to rescue your number for you.

Sadly many providers pop up thinking they know what they're doing, Then soon disappear - often leaving their customers with lost phone numbers.

In reply to a post by sean2003:

...disappear - often leaving their customers with lost phone numbers.

as in 'Every Little Helps' ? I lost a good number there.

The numbers I worked with were originally sourced from Telinco, then World Online, which went to Tiscali then Opal and now it's TalkTalk... I still have a couple of those numbers active myself.

Thank you very much for your response. I got a feeling the issue centred around inter-operator porting agreements. I seem to remember that in the very early days of mobile number porting not all MNOP could do number porting to all others because the agreements weren't yet in place.
sean2003's suggestion to check the ITSPA is one I'll follow to at least minimise the risk of there not being a porting agreement in place and if there are problems to have some backup from an organisation representing the industry (as well as OFCOM).
One thing that made me think though, from the "A telephone number which had previously been exported to the OLO from BT can also be imported." quote from link [5] is that the original assigner of the number may still play a role in future ability to port the number further later.

Thanks again for your response - much appreciated.

I know what you mean about the OVH site - their telephony offerings are a recently introduced service and their English language pages (OVH are based in France) aren't particularly well written (for any product). I only thought I'd give them a chance because I have a couple of dedicated servers with them and, at that at least, I can attest that they really know what they're going.

The ITSPA suggestion is an excellent one, and based on that I'll subscribe to one of their members - I'll start looking at the incoming DID pricing of the QMA labelled ones.

And FWIW, this whole VoIP/DID thing is really cool I did some work with VoIP many many many years (I wrote a pre-SIP softphone or two) ago but now that I'm dabbling with it again it's amazing how many mature(-ing) services and platforms are available (hate to sound like a noob, but it's just that my telecoms work took me in another direction (core transport, QoS management, reliability and so on)).

Thanks again for the great advice, I really appreciate it.

In reply to a post by DonP:

..... is that the original assigner of the number may still play a role in future ability to port the number further later.

Yep, This is a subsequent port. At this stage the original owner of the number, the provider you ported to and the one you now want to port to have to all have agreements in place with each other.

Technically what happens is, The original provider reroutes your number to your new provider rather than the one they were routing to since your first request.
....

Good to hear you're exploring VoIP again, It certainly offers lots of flexibility at a good price usually!

In reply to a post by sean2003:

Technically what happens is, The original provider reroutes your number to your new provider rather than the one they were routing to since your first request.

Wow.. that's gonna lead to one big mess of forwards.. and a big problem for charging (assuming POTS termination costs still work they used to). I guess in terms of forwarding the dynamic routing isn't dynamic enough to follow the ported number, or just the aggregation/subnetting hierarchy isn't sophisticated enough.. I guess if it was the PSTN would end up with a problem similar to the fragmentation of IPv4 address space.

EDIT: Actually, ignore that - I've just remembered how SS7 works - and that the signalling network is separate from the transport network - so, I guess the voice channel could take a direct route to the new voice channel endpoint and only the E164 to endpoint mapping request would be sent via the original number allocator.

In reply to a post by sean2003:

Good to hear you're exploring VoIP again, It certainly offers lots of flexibility at a good price usually!

Absolutely - this DID port is just a quick hack I'll put together for my sister but I've got two other bigger projects going... one is a PBX for my extended family to use with local access DID numbers in various countries (they're a spread out bunch) so they'll pay local prices for calls (or nothing if they use a SIP phone) between themselves instead of international prices (I'll take the local SIP->PSTN termination cost hit, or convince them to do SIP phone).. Voicemail and maybe FAX-to-email included.
The other project is a follow-me system for me.. I have a number of European PAYG SIMs which sometimes I have to take calls on, but I can't be bothered with four mobile phones.. so I'll just call divert each mobile to a DID in the country and the SIP endpoint will find me wherever I am.

Asterisk rules

Edited by deleted (Sun 03-Jul-11 22:36:43)