Best route to nab a number?

dollylama

Maybe this isn't the best place to post this so a Mod can move if they wish

I'm looking to get broadband and phone into a small office. Depending on who I settle with, the broadband will be either VDSL with Vodafone or FTTH with Eir or their resellers. I'm not too worried either way about the broadband, it's the phone side of things I'm focused on

The business had a good phone number some 10 years ago... as in an "easy to remember" or "golden number" on the local exchange. The account was retired in the downturn and the premises vacated so all ties to the number and the lines are long gone. However the number... in fact all the numbers belonging to the business back then have not been reissued to anyone else it seems! I guess there weren't too many getting new phone lines in the depth of recession. I'm taking it that they haven't been re-issued as ringing them does nothing and looking them up on Eir's line check tool shows "Line Unknown" for all of them.

I'd like to try get the old number back on signing up to the phone/broadband package. Has anyone here managed to wrangle a number of their choosing on a new provide or any tips on how best to approach this? Are Eir or their resellers given the tools to select a specific local number for the customer when opening a new account? I know back when Eircom were in the business of selling office phone systems, a golden number was the go to compensation for their woeful service delivery so it was definitely possible once upon a time!

EdgeCase

If it's a small business and you've good broadband, I would go with a VoIP provider and use a hosted PBX service. That would give you all the fancier office phone system features without any local infrastructure, as well as being able to do all sorts of complicated routing and the ability to take the phones anywhere you need them. It's just vastly more flexible.

You could get a new 'golden number' assigned by any of those VoIP providers. If it's a business account, call them up and see if they can get something memorable. Many of them will give you batches of numbers to chose from.

While you can port an existing, working number to a new platform like VoIP or cable telephony, you can't port an inactive number. Also, I'm not sure if Eir retail or any of the other landline providers using OpenEir exchanges can actually request a specific number be reactivated. You could ring Eir Business and see if they can do anything for you I suppose.

Personally, I would just go with a new number and pick something you like and use VoIP.

You can go for 'naked-broadband' options form any of the providers and just go with FTTC / FTTH without any voice services at all and provide your own VoIP. That's what we do and have been doing for years at this stage and it works out far more flexible and cheaper. You also have the advantage of being able to chop and change your broadband providers without screwing up your phones.

You can also quite literally take your VoIP number anywhere. I have plugged the desk phone in in Belgium and had exactly the same service I would have in Ireland .. just bung it into an ethernet socket or use any VoIP device with the long in credentials. Or, you can use apps on your mobile or the built in VoIP stack in Android.

dollylama

Thanks EdgeCase,

I'm familiar enough with VoIP having done a few installations including full hardware systems. It's all slowly going VoIP with Eir, Voda and the other landline providers anyways. In this case however, the business only really needs a number to take calls in on as all calling out is done on mobile. All going to plan there'll be a shift to VoIP and probably a cloud PBX in future but for now a simple "landline" number will do.

From a pricing perspective, Vodafone will give "naked" VDSL for €40+vat and another €5 gets a local phone number and some bundled minutes. To my knowledge, I can't get a local number from any of the VoIP providers - nevermind the bundled minutes - for €5 / month so the old landline will win out here I think.

Goldfish have a good setup where you can click through the list of numbers available but many of their geographic number pools have been well depleted at this stage so the good numbers are gone. Blueface will give you a list of reserved golden numbers if you contact them and I think they charge €50 one-off to get one but last time I checked they had a rather outlandish number sequence in use for our area code.

I'm to ring Vodafone Business in the morning, failing that... preserve me... Eir Business. If neither of these can do it, I'll have to see what the VoIP's have available

ED E

The number will be inactive in eirs pool, if anyone call revive it it'll be them - then later you could port it out. They changed billing platform to a bespoke system a few years ago so recovery may be more hassle than it was in the past. Ideally get an Eir BDM on the line and ask them, wouldnt trust what sales tell you.

dollylama

ED E wrote: »

The number will be inactive in eirs pool, if anyone call revive it it'll be them - then later you could port it out. They changed billing platform to a bespoke system a few years ago so recovery may be more hassle than it was in the past. Ideally get an Eir BDM on the line and ask them, wouldnt trust what sales tell you.

Oh... I didn't realise the number pools were divided out between providers. I foolishly thought that the pool belonged to Openeir and all providers had access to the entire x000 - x999 range at each exchange. Worse again, this particular exchange has a few different pools from expansion over the years so god knows what operator has access to what pool.

If memory serves me, the number in question was last billed by Imagine or whatever they were called at the time. All has been long since cancelled though but would this still mean the number would have returned to Eir? It's amusing yet frustrating that something like picking an available number is so difficult. At some point during the order process a landline number gets allocated. You'd think surely they'd have the tools to over-ride and manually select from the available numbers at this point of the order!

EdgeCase

It actually depends on the technology used to provide your phone service.

If you use a classic dial tone from a POTS exchange, the numbers would all be assigned from an OpenEir pool associated with your local exchange. Those are allocated by ComReg in blocs and then would be assigned by OoenEir to whatever retail phone provider you are using.

Eir, Vodafone and some of the others now also connect customers to VoIP for voice using the ATA in the router. The device in your router simply connects back to a softswitch, with full QoS management across their network. Effectively the same approach that Virgin media use, just with FTTC or FTTH instead of a cable modem.

If it's on one of those services, you'll likely be assigned a new number in a different bloc from your traditional local exchange.

There used to be fully unbundled voice from Smart Telecom, where they actually had their own mini exchange providing dial tones and service but these daya, nobody seems to bother.

If you're going with a PSTN service, the local OpenEir Ericsson or Nokia (Alcatel) switch simply does all the access network stuff and your voice calls are routed to your preferred carrier at a handover point somewhere in the network.

I think it just became more cost effective not to bother unbundling and with the advent of VoIP it's becoming possible to just bypass the PSTN entirely and connect end users to your own voice infrastructure without needing to rely on old tech

Marlow

Correct. Each phone provider has their own pool of numbers within a region.

When you port the number, it can follow you to another provider.

If you ever release the number, it goes back to the original provider.

That's the way Comreg (And most other countries regulators) have set things up.

Give you an example: Galway 091-395xxx is Blueface

/M

dollylama

Thanks for the replies

Something of a non-update but something to add to the confusion! I got in touch with Vodafone Business sales today as a start point. The rep I spoke to immediately understood what I was asking and said it was possible to take over a desired number once services were setup. I stressed that we didn't own the number but to our knowledge it was inactive so he done a lookup on the number and it showed Line Unknown (as it does for me) to which he says this usually means there's no services running on it.

The kicker is that the broadband and phone service has to be installed and running first and then when active, I have to initiate the number change request with them... the number can't be pulled during order provisioning. I've enough experience with Vodafone and others to know what's promised - even with good intentions - doesn't always materialise so I expect a roadblock when they go to pull in the number I want. I asked him would he put in writing that I could get the number but he wouldn't as "they can't guarantee numbers" so I told him if it doesn't work out, I'd have to cancel to which he was indifferent and said I would still be within the cooling off and free to do so. So we'll see what happens... I'll get an order in later this week.


I think EdgeCase has cleared up my confusion about pools and provider allocations. While the "physical" providers like Vodafone, Digiweb and BT each have a few of their own 1000-number pools in almost all MNA's (Minimum Number Areas... new term I learned!), from my experience they rarely use them yet as all new provides that I have worked on over the years - PSTN, ISDN and even blocks of DDI's - were issued from what I would call the local exchange pool... as in the pool(s) of 1000 numbers that has been issued from the local exchange since day dot in many cases. All the pools I've checked for local towns are shown as allocated to "Eircom" by Comreg but it looks like the resellers are using them freely. As Voda and other resellers are shifting customers to VoIP, it will be interesting to see do they start making use of their own allocations in each MNA for new provides or can they stay taking numbers from the Eircom pools which locals would be more familiar with

EdgeCase

The number blocs are basically assigned to a particular "switch" (exchange), whether that's an old-school OpenEir exchange connected to copper wires feeding your house with a dial tone or ISDN, or a VoIP softswitch in some newer network, it's still more or less the same concept.

If you went with a new number on Vodafone or possibly even Eir retail and it's provided by VoIP, I doubt they'd assign a number that's linked to an old local PSTN/ISDN AXE or E10 exchange somewhere. From a technical point of view, it wouldn't make a lot of sense as those old digital exchanges aren't quite as flexible as modern soft switches and porting numbers out would require you to actually set the number up on the physical exchange first, then move it.

It wouldn't make any sense to request old PSTN assignments from a cost or practicality point of view.

The old network literally used the logic of the numbering to route calls i.e. 01 280 or 021 450 told you which switch to send the call to. Nowadays, when you dial a number the exchange / switch performs a database look up to identify where the number's really located. In the past, that was only done for 1800, 1850 etc numbers and so on.

Even in the digital era, they were still very reliant on the structure of the numbers to figure out the routing.

All of this stuff has become a *lot* more flexible, even in the classic landline networks. There's been a lot of tech rolled out behind the scenes over the years.

dollylama

Another update. Hopefully my rambling here might help someone else looking to get setup with a custom number in future... or put them off entirely!

I got speaking to an excellent guy in eir Business sales. Bad news though, the number I was looking, in fact all the old numbers are not available. He dug in to see what was going on with them but eventually hit a brick wall. They were showing but locked and the additional information was hidden from him. He figured as they were last with Imagine or another operator when the accounts were ceased ~10 years ago, they were never returned to the eir network.

He did however spend a good 20 minutes reading through numbers available at the exchange to see if any were of interest! I've settled on a decent enough number so I'm going to place the order tomorrow. There's a charge of 100+ odd € for selecting a number as opposed to being assigned one at random on a normal order. He says this is the standard installation charge and is applied because he has to build the order through some other system. We'll see how it goes

Ten Pin

Might be a good idea to keep a note of all steps in the order process and record any calls with Eir. They have various unlinked databases and systems and you might end up getting the run around if it doesn't run smoothly.

dollylama

Just a post to close this out... I got my number!!

I placed the order with eir Business and strangely enough, the agent took literally just the install address and my mobile number and put the order in. He was to call me back the day after install was confirmed to setup the package, and billing - including I assume collecting the aforementioned install fee - but I've heard nothing since! Anyway, KN landed, picked up a spare line in the premises, brought it live and surely enough, there was the number I ordered. It was a standard PSTN voice install

The eir agent who placed the order was well familiar with the process so I guess he's sorted a few vanity numbers for customers. He did warn me that sometimes the exchange will "kick" out a number 1 digit out from the requested number at time of provisioning but he said it's only a matter of remapping the requested number afterwards.. something to that effect anyways!

It looks like I'll have to get back onto eir to finish the account setup, including getting broadband activated but the hard bit is done I feel. Granted I didn't get the number I set out to get for reasons mentioned above but I did get to choose a good number all the same.. so it can be done.