There has been some debate over whether Pinger/TextFree (www.Pinger.com) is subject to the same number portability regulations that other carriers are subject to.
Pinger claims they are not a carrier, and as such, they are not required to port numbers in or out of their service.
Probably not true.
Pinger is subject to the same number portability regulations as other VOIP (not wireless) carriers. Just like Toktumi and Google Voice. Here’s why.
1) Pinger is not really free (as they claim). There is indeed economic transfer. In the form of advertising revenues that funds the services. VOIP carriers (Pinger, Voipo, Google Voice and Skype operate VOIP services overtop of Bandwidth.com’s services) pay for all of those taxes that Kayla lists on a recent Pinger site posting HERE.
According to the FCC, VOIP Carriers can choose to pass those costs on as line item charges if they wish (individual or cluster line item charges, that is), or bundle them in as part of a single fee, or simply pay for them themselves as part of an alternative revenue model and not charge for them at all.
Bottom line, as a subscriber, YOU are paying for them through an economic transfer one way or another — in this case by agreeing to received paid advertising in lieu of paying for the service AND taxes and fees that are being paid for by Pinger at the other end anyway.
2) By way of another example, Google Voice is free too, and they allow for porting of numbers both in and out. If you select one of their numbers when you sign up. They too pay for the taxes and fees and work out in their business model that the lifetime value of the relationship they have per “Google Voice Subscriber” will move than cover the cost of that added Google Voice service associated with the Google UserID. It’s called “stickiness”. I know. A tired “hangover” term from the dot com boom era. But valid nevertheless. The notion is that you stay with Google longer because of the incremental value added services like Google Voice (and Google Docs, Google Calendar, etc.), thereby allowing for that much more in advertising revenue and such. Arbitrage modeling has obviously shown that the economic transfer of that added collateral revenue will more than cover the Google Voice Carrier costs — including those FCC related taxes and fees that are not passed along to the GV user explicitly.
3) Google Voice is “free”. They are a carrier. They allow number porting (in and out).They charges for ports (legal and sensible since it does costs money including out of pocket fees they have to pay the underlying companies that do the work). Pinger can too. The “Pinger is free” argument relating to bearing the cost of porting does not hold water.
4) Filing a complaint with the FCC should yield success in popping a porting OUT of a Pinger number.
5) The same should be true of a porting IN request. File a complaint with the FCC. But I’m not convinced you’d want to force Pinger to accept a port IN. Even though Number Portability among carriers and networks (wireless, land and VOIP) is a hard requirement of the FCC, why on earth would you want to do business with someone who doesn’t want to do business with you?
To underscore, whether a company charges for their VOIP app/service on top of a WiFi and/or wireless carrier’s services does not matter. Companies like Pinger that claim their service is free is not technically accurate. If there was no revenue associated with their service, it would not be sustainable, would it? Someone is underwriting those taxes and fees. Mark my word — they ARE being paid. BUT, there is NO legal requirement for a carrier to pass those along as an explicit line item charge. Nor are they required to state that they are “included” in the fees or services that are provided. It’s my understanding that they are not even required to disclose that we are carriers. But I do not believe they are allowed to misstate that fact. Companies are carriers if they are providing VOIP telecom services regardless of the business/revenue model. Period.
Pinger — my intention was not to slam. But to clarify. It’s most likely that only a very few in the company are aware of the nuances. But I do think it can be misleading to people who are even less armed with the facts. And they are the ones who are trying to figure out how to get the most out of the telecommunications ecosystem. And number portability is a big part of that.
All — You can turn to the FCC site for information. But a lesser known and most helpful information resource is www.NPAC.com. They’re really a resource for network and system providers and not consumers. They execute the regulation of portability of number at that level, including disputes between those parties.Worth a reach. It should provide you with additional confidence when it comes to understanding your number portability rights.You have them. And Carriers are required to.
As an aside, every single port request you have ever made through your carrier, or ever will make, goes from your carrier through NPAC before it reaches the “losing” carrier. And when the port is being confirmed, it goes back through NPAC.
Hopefully this note will prove to clarify and simplify things on the subject. If I am truly wrong on any points, I hope to be corrected with reference.
PhoneNumberGuy
P.S, We operate a private carrier service too. So we know something of what we talk about from the inside. And, no, we do not charge line item taxes or such fees such as what Pinger would suggest a carrier must. And in some cases, the actual VOIP carrier service fees are rolled up into a general monthly consulting services fee where it would be difficult to decipher that we are a VOIP carrier at all.
www.1234Telecom.com
