Moving VOIP landline between providers

I've never had much to do with the porting of landline numbers (and when I did was a very long time ago), so don't take anything I write as gospel, but my understanding in this situation is that there is nothing at all RSP2 can do at this point to connect your previous phone number. In order to port a number, it must still be connected. And in order to reconnect a number from scratch, they must already have control of it in their own number pool, which in this case they do not.

The phone number you were originally assigned for the connection at your address will be part of what is called a code block. The major RSPs such as Spark, Devoli, OneNZ, Vocus etc all have unique code blocks assigned to them - these are specific number ranges from which they are allowed to allocate phone numbers to their customers. Smaller RSPs would likely use code blocks belonging to the larger organisations that they wholesale through.

End users can port their existing number over to a different provider, but the new provider only has a right of control over the number while it's active on their network. If it ends up getting disconnected, I believe there are only limited circumstances where the non-native provider can get that number reactivated, and only within a limited timeframe. After that, the number is quarantined to be returned to the RSP who holds the code block for the number range that the individual number was originally pulled from.

The question here is whether RSP1 in your case was the original code block holder for your phone number - they may not have been if you had already changed providers at some time in the past. For example, let's say you originally connected with Telecom in the early 2000's, and then in 2015 you ported the phone number to Vodafone on a new fibre service. And now you have asked 2Degrees to transfer the fibre broadband service to them, but forgot to mention the landline number. OneNZ (formerly Vodafone) didn't receive an outport request, so the number ends up getting disconnected. You realise the mistake after the fact but neither OneNZ nor 2Degrees can do anything as the number has been quarantined back to the original code block assignee - in this case Spark (formerly Telecom).

There's two obvious points of failure here - one was you the end user forgetting to request the landline number to be ported. Realistically if you had not forgotten to request the number port, you likely would not be in this situation. The second failure is potentially RSP1, who claim they could not get the number reconnected. I am not sure of the ins and outs of that - possibly their system would not allow them to reconnect the number without an actual physical line connection to an address (although the Customerlink service is designed for precisely that - activating a phone number and holding it at the exchange in a virtual state that allows it to be ported, diverted or answered virtually by voicemail. I guess the 3rd failure is reaching 30 days which may mean retrieving the number is now nigh on impossible.

You may be able to use https://www.nad.org.nz/number-register/ to try and determine which RSP is the holder of the code block for your phone number. They may be able to get it back for you, but I don't pretend to know what the odds of that might be.

Again, don't take anything I have said as gospel - it will not surprise me if some switched on porting guru debunks half of what I have just written....

rossnixon

Wheelbarrow01