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AT&T Wireless Lists Issues Causing Switching Problems
Source: The Seattle Times
Publication date: 2003-12-11


Dec. 11--AT&T Wireless told the Federal Communications Commission yesterday that issues outside its control were partly to blame for difficulties in handling customer requests to change services while retaining the same cellphone numbers.
But a spokesman for the Redmond company said it wasn't exclusively third-party vendors or poor cooperation among competing wireless carriers, but also internal factors that contributed to the problems.

"We have obviously identified problems of our own in conjunction with our software and clearly other carriers have issues, too," said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T Wireless. "This is a tough process for everyone."

AT&T Wireless' response came after the FCC last week sent the company a letter asking why a disproportionate number of complaints were filed against AT&T Wireless, compared with other national carriers.

On Tuesday, the FCC said it had received 332 complaints against AT&T Wireless from customers since number switching -- called wireless portability -- went into effect Nov. 24. That was the most of any major carrier.

Verizon Wireless received 129; Cingular Wireless, 98; Sprint PCS, 94; Nextel Communications, 46; and T-Mobile, 44.

Even before the FCC rule governing portability went into effect, it was expected to be a technical headache susceptible to frequent failures.

Many of the problems revolve around the time it takes to switch the old number to the customer's new carrier. Instead of the expected 2-1/2 hours, customers are finding the process takes days, sometimes weeks, to be completed.

Last week, AT&T Wireless admitted that it was having a harder time than its competitors and that more than 60 percent of the time it was unable to port numbers on the first try. On average, the industry was porting numbers half of the time on the first try.

AT&T Wireless said Tuesday the problems had improved substantially and that transfers were on par with other carriers.

In its seven-page response to the FCC yesterday, AT&T Wireless laid out glitches that occurred during the first few weeks of porting. Most of the issues, it said, were attributable to two factors: problems with NeuStar, its outside software vendor, and with TSI, the software vendor being used by the other five national carriers. Both companies handle the actual switching of the numbers from one carrier to another.

The porting process starts when customers ask to keep their number when changing carriers. The new carrier then requests the port by entering a customer's information into a software system, which sends it to the customer's current carrier. That carrier's software checks the information for accuracy, and then either releases the number to be ported, or sends the customer back to the new carrier saying the information is incomplete.

Washington, D.C-based NeuStar's Nightfire software was taking too long to complete this request. As a result, many of the requests failed not because of incorrect information, but because they expired.

"It was taking anywhere from 30 minutes to many hours," Siegel said. "Clearly we had to address that and I must say with outstanding cooperation from people at NeuStar, we've been able to do that."

Fixing the process, AT&T Wireless told the FCC, involved upgrading hardware, increasing capacity and rewriting software code. Those problems have been resolved, the company said.

AT&T Wireless said the response time to a porting request improved -- in 75 percent of cases -- from hours to under 30 minutes. And up to 90 percent of the backlog created because of the software glitch has been cleared up, Siegel said.

Still, he cautioned that customers should expect ports to take between three to five days to complete.

Part of this, he said, is because of technical glitches that all carriers are facing. Another component of the process requires systems of competing carriers to cooperate before the request is completed.

AT&T Wireless, the third largest in the number of subscribers, is the only one of the six national carriers using NeuStar as its software vendor. The other five use Tampa, Fla.-based TSI Telecommunication Services. TSI could not be reached for comment.

NeuStar said after AT&T Wireless filed its response yesterday that its software didn't fail, but that the problems resulted from the volume of ports being requested.

The initial issues were related to the capacity of the system, not the software, a NeuStar spokesperson said. "The system was set up for assumptions of volume, and when the volume was higher, it was adjusted," the spokesperson said.

Exactly how many ports are being requested by customers is unknown. Expectations before the law went into effect reached into millions. But industry reports the day after said initial turnout was closer to 100,000 customers.

Siegel said yesterday that customers are taking a wait-and-see approach.

"While we see brisk traffic in the stores, we still continue to see the number of people interested as relatively light, whether (ported) in or out," he said.

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(c) 2003, The Seattle Times. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Publication date: 2003-12-11