Few Bad Apples Ruin It For All

All RespOrgs protect errors in porting using reject codes.  But some, and yes they are the usual suspects, use them to slow valid rejects.  Many years ago the Toll-Free Guidelines put out a set of reject codes that were allowed by industry agreement.  The Guidelines are managed by a national industry group called the SMS Number Administration Committee (SANC), an ATIS Committee.  I am a member of that committee and soon we will be releasing a new version of the Guidelines.  In these new guidelines, two reject codes will be deleted and others will be better defined.

It is very unfortunate that the deletions are needed due to abuse by a few.  “Other” is being deleted because, instead of it being used for very unusual circumstances, it has become the answer for RespOrgs who want to use rejects like, “Need Bill Copy.”  “Need Bill Copy” is NOT a reject code.  It is each RespOrg’s responsibility to manage both its internal information and its agents to be able to verify by toll-free number.  However, requiring bill copies has become a way to shirk that responsibility and delay valid ports.  The tariff allows two days to respond to a port, so if it is a name/number mismatch or address mismatch, the reject should happen within that two-day timeframe.

The other code being deleted is “Unsatisfactory Business Relationship.”  This was not a reject code in the original Guidelines, but sometime before 1997 when the last Guidelines were released, Allnet, who became Global Crossing, convinced the SNAC to add it.  I personally thought it was great.  It was a way to alert another RespOrg that they were porting in a customer that hadn’t paid their last carrier.  The number still could be ported without the consent of the existing RespOrg, but it was at their risk.  ATL has not seen this abused much, but apparently other companies have seen it used as a delaying tactic, so it is going.

I have said this before and will be frustrated about it until I leave the industry to hang out on a sun-filled beach:  If the industry would just police the bad apples, the rest of us could continue using the tools we have.  Lack of policing means we all end up operating under rules that are less than perfect and it shouldn’t have to be that way.