[Solved] Troubles with phone number ported some time ago

[Bob]

Hi all,
I decide to open my own topic on this one, as it's going forewer, but now I have some more information.

The short story is - I moved my home phone number to FPL. After more or less smooth porting my phone number become available, and I start enjoying the serivce, but couple of friends and some business colleagues stop calling me . I tried to figure out why, and for them - as soon as they called me they receive a message "this account number is not valid". Two of them were from my previous voip phone provider, another one was from bell, so I wasn't able to find "common denominator" besided FPL, but still I asked them to open tickets, and tickets were opened for all cases. According to all providers - calls were successfully moved out of their network, and according to FPL there is no problem with FPL.

Funny enough - one of my friends finally was able to make a call to me (previous saturday), and everything was working fine .. but after this short success he had no second chance .. again same message. So here I am, reporting a bug in FPL for ported numbers .

Update: the issue was caused by Bell still having my phone in their system .. months after porting. Thanks to FPL it's solved now.

[Jake]

have you looked in your phone logs in your admin area? failed calls also http://www.freephoneline.ca/callLogs

That might show if they are hitting FPL and what the problem might be. That error message certainly does sound like an FPL message. Having the time and date of when they called and from what number might help FPL track down the problem also.

Good luck.

[laurent]

You know, when I had my phone number ported to FPL, after the successful porting, my voicemail became unreachable and this was exactly the message I was hearing: "This account number is not valid." I'm assuming it has nothing to do with your problem, but it's interesting to note that this is the exact same message.

In my case, they reset-recreated-respawn-resomething to my voicemail manually, and then it worked fine ever since.

[Bob]

have you looked in your phone logs in your admin area? failed calls also http://www.freephoneline.ca/callLogs

That might show if they are hitting FPL and what the problem might be. That error message certainly does sound like an FPL message. Having the time and date of when they called and from what number might help FPL track down the problem also.

Good luck.

Hi Jake,
there is nothing in my phone logs from all time that they (or I, from their phones) called. I just confirmed again with bell, that phone calls from their number are leaving bell network successfully, so it's lost somewhere in FPL (and I confirmed 5 seconds ago by calling my home FPL number that it's still the same message and no call information in the log). I think the message of Laurent points to the same direction.

It's a pity cause FPL is losing money by it (calls from my phone number to those numbers are completely successfull

[laurent]

Just to be sure, have you clicked the "Show failed calls" tickbox in the logs page?

[Bob]

Just to be sure, have you clicked the "Show failed calls" tickbox in the logs page?

Yep, and I have a very long listing of "failed" calls (because I wasn't at home, or the guys whom I called weren't at home, etc.).

The most interesting story, as I said, is - _one_ day, and one day onle the guy with "unlucky" number, was able to call me .. ( it was the evening of 20.10.10 ) . Not before, not after, he had no chance ...
WHY

[Jake]

I can only suggest that you get on the phone with FPL support and ask them to call the number when you are on the line with them and see what they get. Murphy's Law clearly states that it will work perfectly, but you never know.

Do you have any idea how many numbers this is effecting? What I mean is if you call the number from a mobile, payphone, other landline; does it go through? and you are sure that was the message they got, because that has FPL written all over it

Other than that try and get together with the people who can't get through and write down the numbers they called from, the number they called, along with the time. Armed with that once again jump on the line with support and see if they can do anything, or ask Steve or Kris nicely if they will have a dig around. If you have detailed information then they might be able to track down the calls coming in and see where they are being routed to.

[laurent]

Pretty sure this problem is going to require someone from FPL to work with you on this and perform live tests. Like, he looks at the whatever main server while you're calling from a line which doesn't work. I'm sorry we have nothing to offer, it's clearly a technical problem between FPL's sytem and the rest of the phone companies'.

The hard part is often to get the right technician to dedicate some time for your strange and hard to pinpoint issue.

[FONGO_kris]

I must say that I take great joy in digging apart tough issues, if you could pass me your number as well as a copy of a call log where you experienced what is described above, as long as it's less than 3 days old I can pull up a SIP trace for you and we can go from there.

[Bob]

I must say that I take great joy in digging apart tough issues, if you could pass me your number as well as a copy of a call log where you experienced what is described above, as long as it's less than 3 days old I can pull up a SIP trace for you and we can go from there.

Thanks for support. I send all the details by PM. ( I asked my friend to try again, and he has same problem, so the full weekend and workday on monday the record shall be available). There is no problem in reproducing it again also . Any evening.

[Bob]

any news?
Should I ask somebody from those numbers to try to call me again ?

[Bob]

any news?
Should I ask somebody from those numbers to try to call me again ?

An update. Just read something on the forums about forwarding port 10000 to pap, added it , and have a call from the friend who wasn't able to call before. Now I start thinking that perhaps my router didn't activated some ports properly before, or that something changed ... will post an update as soon as I check another number or two)

[FONGO_kris]

Thank you Bob, I believe I pm'd you with my test results. Nothing strange is coming from our end, I can see your call entering and leaving our network successfully. Please let us know the results of your tests.

[Bob]

Thank you Bob, I believe I pm'd you with my test results. Nothing strange is coming from our end, I can see your call entering and leaving our network successfully. Please let us know the results of your tests.

I'm totally confused now. The guy just called me by other number and said it's not working again. I checked my settings and _nothing_ was changed ... and yet two days ago he was able to make a call 0:31 03.11.10 19:36:00 ... I think now we could say that it's on PAP level, which is better than nothing.

[Bob]

Thank you Bob, I believe I pm'd you with my test results. Nothing strange is coming from our end, I can see your call entering and leaving our network successfully. Please let us know the results of your tests.

I'm totally confused now. The guy just called me by other number and said it's not working again. I checked my settings and _nothing_ was changed ... and yet two days ago he was able to make a call 0:31 03.11.10 19:36:00 ... I think now we could say that it's on PAP level, which is better than nothing.

Update #2.
I have to take back my previous comment.

during this weekend I made some testing. Here are the results:

1. There is no direct dependency between pap settings and the problem. in _SOME_ cases after pap reset the remote user is able to make a call, in some (many more) cases - he can't (and get "account is not valid" message). By the same time it's doesn't look like "register" issue, as I'm able to call the same phone from my mobile without any problem at the same time.

I start thinking about http://forum.freephoneline.ca/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1821 , and my second (actually original) line, but even if I switch it off in pap completely the problem persists (and SIP port was different, and sometimes it was working even when line was on), so
a) the problem is not in pap
b) the problem is affecting me seriously, as now it's proven that problem is intermittent by nature, so it could be that many landline numbers are affected ( I still didn't have any single problem calling my home from mobile though )
c) I could wild guess that it's exactly "porting related" issue, but not in the area of "porting" itself, rather in area of how the "rename" process was done from original FPL number to my ported number (perhaps there is some glitch in software in this area)

so overall - HEEEELP please. I'll call on monday to check the ticket and raise prioriry, I also have to consider moving to different voip provider with this number if the issue isn't resolved till the end of the month, which is really unfortunate as I like FPL (I would keep my old FPL number in any case it works good (for some reason it still asks me to call 1 in front of any phone number despite of changed dial string, but its nothing )