Neko
Supreme Overlord
Dec 11, 2003, 1:32 AM
Post #1 of 1
(2264 views)
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REDMOND, Wash. December 09, 2003 - AT&T Wireless said today it is making significant progress implementing local number portability (LNP), the FCC mandate that went into effect on Nov. 24.
As a result of software improvements the company has put in place with its vendor, customers "porting" their numbers to and from AT&T Wireless now do so in times on a par with other carriers -- in some cases in just a few hours.
"The extreme complexities and radical interdependencies of LNP have challenged our entire industry," said Michael Keith, AT&T Wireless' president of mobility services. "Unfortunately, the first group of customers who have tried moving their wireless numbers to a different carrier have had a frustrating experience.
"AT&T Wireless has certainly not been satisfied with the performance of our porting systems in the first few weeks of the LNP process, and we regret inconveniencing our customers," Keith added. "However, this is a new, complicated process, and all wireless carriers have had LNP-related challenges."
For example, the company said that the porting system used by other major wireless carriers experienced periodic outages in the weeks prior to the implementation of LNP, which inhibited the ability of AT&T Wireless' vendor to test its software.
"We have identified and begun to solve the problems affecting AT&T Wireless, and have improved the customer experience as a result. It is worth noting that so far we have seen relatively light interest in porting in or out.
"Neither we nor our industry have all the issues licked yet, but we are making steady, solid progress in these early days of an unprecedented process," Keith said
The company will detail its progress in a letter it will send to the FCC tomorrow in response to a request from the Commission's Wireless Bureau. The letter will document the ways in which AT&T Wireless has substantially cleared up problems it discovered in third-party software it uses as a clearinghouse for porting requests from other carriers.
"The software was slow to acknowledge requests from other carriers to move a customer's number to them, which created a bottleneck because it is the first step in the LNP process. As a result of changes we made in conjunction with the software provider, we are now responding to more than three-quarters of these requests in 30 minutes or less," Keith said.
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