Calling issues in 919 area code

[VOIPoTim]

If you have problem calls, it's important that you report the specific numbers to support@voipo.com so the actual carriers that service those numbers can be identified and the issues corrected.

Old Procedure

We have tightened up our policies surrounding re-routing to make things more consistent. In the past reps were sometimes re-routing an entire area code or NPANXX combo and any that were re-routed incorrectly like this were cleared recently so the routing can be corrected properly.

There were two key issues with updating routing that way which is why it is not standard procedure for us. This ad hoc approach was not effective and often caused erratic issues where issues would crop up again and it was drastically increasing costs.

1) When an entire area code or NPA-NXX combo is re-routed, it affects a huge range of numbers. In most cases, there are many different carriers within a range of number. As an example, 949-829-XXXX is a block where new numbers were issued to AT&T, Cost Plus, and InfoTelecom. There are also many numbers which have been ported in from other carriers in this same range.

So what has happened in the past is say someone has an issue calling issue calling to an AT&T number in that 949-829-XXXX area. In the past with our "use your discretion" policy regarding routing, some reps would re-route the entire NPA-NXX out through an alternate trunk or carrier on our network. This may solve the issue for the customer who had an issue with calling the AT&T number, but in turn would cause an entirely new issue with customers calling Infotelecom numbers within the same block. A rep then may re-route back out the original way which would solve the issue calling an Infotelecom number, but break the AT&T one again.

This is why some users reported outgoing calling issues being fixed and then coming back and fixed and coming back (all the free form re-routes reps were making).

2) The second factor is cost. When re-routing an entire NPA-NXX, it was often isolated to one specific carrier within that network (like in the example above AT&T or Infotelecom) and by re-routing the entire block, every single number was re-routed including ones that did not need to be re-routed. This greatly increased costs. Just for some perspective, just 100 of the "custom routes" that were added in our system were generating $15K more in monthly costs than routing the the original assigned carriers.

When looking at all the custom routes in place and analyzing all traffic, we had less than 3% of traffic re-routed and our total overall costs were literally 3x as much as if we had used the original carriers for that 3%. I'm sure you can appreciate that it's not a good thing to pay 3X as much on the total cost of providing service for 3% of traffic.

On a side note, this is not a matter of "cheaper" carriers vs more expensive ones. We are very confident in all of the carriers we work with and have good relationships with them all. In some areas though, different carriers have different situations and are significantly cheaper in those particular areas. As an example, if a carrier is a CLEC somewhere, it's almost always going to be cheaper for them to handle the traffic than it is for a carrier who is reselling and handing off to another CLEC. Pacwest is an example here that is VERY competitive in their territory (mostly west coast), but is very expensive for routing traffic elsewhere (even though they will do it) because they just pass it on to someone else. There are also some situations where we have partnerships with other companies for various reasons. One is a provider which has a very large PAYG base (but has only been mentioned a handful of times on BBR) with a lot of telemarketing type traffic. Our residential traffic has longer calls which help balance out their very short calls to give them a better overall traffic profile.

By re-routing only affected traffic and working with the carriers involved to solve the issues rather than simply routing around them, this is a non-issue.


New Procedure

First, we've moved all broad re-routing to Tier II techs only. Front line support can re-route any individual numbers that you report as having an issue, but they do not have the ability to re-route entire areas.

Re-routing the specific destinations will give some level of immediate resolution, but won't resolve the broad issue....re-routing ALL calls in that area wouldn't either and may cause more issues with other providers in the area.

Our system tracks what it perceives to be failed calls. We use this information in combination with your reported failed calls to find trends. When we see a trend in an area, our Tier II department is contacting the NOCs or the appropriate carriers to work with them to identify and fix the issue so that the core issue can be resolved rather than simply routing around them. Most respond very quickly when we have sample numbers and concrete stats (like x% of calls to you failed here), but some other companies may be slower. If they are slow to respond to us, Tier II has the discretion to do a temporary mass re-route for an area as long as it meets certain criteria and we've had a minimum number of failed calls (either reported or detected by system) to there. Overall, there are some cheap/low quality carriers out there, but that's not really the issue here. It's just a matter of some carriers being more competitive in their native areas or due to special situations.

This does a few things.

1) It solves the core issue rather than "patching it" by simply routing around it. This makes it less likely to occur again and also it's not going to "break" other working routes by re-routing them away in the mass re-route.

2) It keeps our costs in reality since we are not re-routing numbers that we should not be to more expensive carriers.

Big Picture

Overall, there may be some apparent new issues that came from reversing some "broad" changes that reps made in the past rather than dealing with the issue directly. The good news is that as we work through any of those, this will be less likely to occur again, will make the experience much more consistent, and will cut out outgoing call costs by 2/3.

If you have problem calls, please report them so we have valid data to use to get them resolved. Many customers will say "all calls in the area" and then when we test numbers in that area they all are fine. 99% of the time it's carrier specific in terms of it may be all AT&T Wireless numbers in a destination or something along those lines rather than all carriers there.