Nathan's Occasional Blog

Tl;dr = Ooma lines are “land lines” not mobile lines, and the number port process is different. Make sure your new service provider knows it’s a land line transfer. More details below…

I decided to document my experience (and the solution) here after seeing many people share struggles of moving phone numbers off of Ooma in general, and to Xfinity Mobile specifically. I hope this helps you solve your number porting frustration, or ideally prevent frustration from happening.

You have a home phone!?

We’re old school and have had a home phone for a long time. Back in the day it made sense because our youngest kiddo didn’t have a cell phone, and we wanted to make sure he (or a babysitter) had an easy way to call one of us or 911 in an emergency. We got a local “land line” phone number from Comcast/Xfinity’s Voice service to meet our needs. Over the subsequent ~15 years we’ve also used that number for a lot of our financial accounts and more mundane stuff like Safeway Rewards, etc.

We moved to a different neighborhood in our small town 6 years ago and for dumb FCC reasons Xfinity couldn’t move our home number to our new address. Even though it’s VoIP. Our house is in the middle of what used to be a forest, and long ago somebody drew a dial plan map that put is in the next town over. LAME!

Simply dropping that phone number seemed like a bad idea for the same reasons we had it in the first place (above), so I signed up with Ooma and ported the number over there. We’ve had no issues with their service, but they definitely lack a few nice-to-have features (like SMS texting on the line).

These days we actually don’t even answer our home phone line, so making sure our home phone rings somewhere we can pick it up doesn’t matter. In fact, killing our wireless home phones that just bother us when they ring is actually a net positive here. BUT we don’t want to let that phone number back onto the open market to be assigned to someone else because we have so much tied to it.

The problem

Tangentially, we recently cancelled our Xfinity TV service and went internet-only (I’d kill for a symmetric 1Gbps service from someone … there’s fiber in the neighborhood but Centurylink only offers a lame 30Mbps plan to our address for some dumb reason). While going through that service change I tried to do Xfinity Voice again (nope – dumb FCC map hasn’t been updated) and then the agent offered Xfinity Mobile for $15/mo and a free phone. Same price. More features. Free phone that will just live on silent mode in our home office. SOLD!

My brand new Motorola moto g stylus 5G arrived the other day (wow, great branding there – rolls right off the tongue) and I hopped on Xfinity Mobile’s activation page. It failed trying to do the number port from Ooma.

I’ve spent 5+ hours working with support teams on both sides (Ooma and Xfinity Mobile) trying to figure out how to get the port to work. Every time XM tried they got an error saying the number was “locked to Verizon.” HUH? Where did they come into the picture?

Well, it turns out Verizon is the service provider Ooma leveraged for my number. XM called them and they said to talk to Ooma to unlock it. Ooma says it’s not locked, and they don’t see a port request in the system. XM says they’ve tried a dozen times and it keeps failing with error “1P – Verizon number lock.”

Today I persisted on the phone with XM and got escalated to a Tier2 agent, who talked directly to their number porting team and tried a few things, including a second number port system on their end that gives a detailed error information. It turns out Xfinity Mobile assumes your porting in a wireless number, and to port a land line number is a different process!

The Solution: How to Port a Number Away from Ooma

Thanks to Michelle, a Porting Specialist at Ooma, for providing specifics on what Ooma needs to see in the porting request. The biggest thing to remember is that you will need to have your new provider submit a “LSR” or Local Service Request to port the phone number. This is not a wireless request. Moving a landline takes a few days typically, while moving a mobile number can be done in minutes.

LSR details:

• Number to be ported: xxxyyyzzzz
• End User Name: FIRST LAST NAME <– obviously use your own name that’s on the account
• Auth Name: FIRST LAST NAME
• Address: 1234 FOREST LN ANYTOWN, ST 12345 <– obviously use your own service address
• Account number: 1xxxyyyzzzz <– this is another tricky point based on what I’ve see from others having issues online. You need the 1 in front of your Ooma phone number
• PIN: <blank> <– there’s often a security PIN provided to the customer by the current provider to prevent just anyone from moving hijacking your phone number. Evidently Ooma doesn’t use that kind of security. Yikes! This should be left blank in the porting request. If a code is required by your new provider’s system then can use 0000 or 1234. (I’m guessing their admin password is “password”)

For Xfinity Mobile, expect your first attempt at activation to fail (I don’t remember there being a landline option on the number port page … if there is and I missed it CHOOSE THAT ONE!). Call Xfinity Mobile’s customer service line at 888-936-4968 and explain that the number port failed and that they need to submit a LANDLINE port request. I think the system their Tier1 agents have access to only works for mobile numbers. Jacquline (Tier2/supervisor at Xfinity Mobile) was super helpful in figuring out what was going wrong. She said their system will send you an email when the port is done and activation is complete; at this point you’ve probably already got at least one email from the system saying the number port failed and to call their support team.

Summary

Once upon a time I managed corporate telephone systems, circuits, dial plan blocks, and mobile phone fleets, so I have some insider knowledge and experience that helped me navigate this morass. That said, be kind to your customer service reps! Knowledge is no replacement for a positive attitude and friendly voice on the other end of the phone when they’re used to people yelling at them all day.

Once submitted it can take 24-72 hours, or so I’m told, for the request to show up in your current provider’s queue and be actioned. Worst case it could be 7-10 DAYS for the number port to actually go through according to what Xfinity Mobile told me, but hopefully it’s not that bad. I wrote this post shortly after getting the LCR submitted and before I forget the details. I’ll update this post with more info once the port goes through.

GOOD LUCK!
-N2