Some Net phone users can't re-use numbers

VoIP providers would do best to ensure that customers can transfer their numbers easily, said Kenneth DeGraff, policy analyst at Consumers Union. "Otherwise, they're inviting increased regulation on themselves."

After some efforts, VoIP companies started letting new customers use their existing phone numbers. It's been a good selling point: get a cheaper service and keep your old number. Vonage, the largest VoIP provider with a customer base of 1 million, says that 66 percent of its new customers bring their numbers with them. AT&T's CallVantage said a "substantial" number does so.

But defecting customers who want to take the number with them are another issue.

VoIP companies are becoming quite "good at receiving ported numbers. But because it's such a small and nascent market, companies are inexperienced at losing customers at this point and the processes are not ironed out as much," says Jan Dawson, research director at Ovum.

The result is that customers using VoIP may or may not be able to take their numbers with them should they choose to change service. Even companies that allow departing customers to take numbers with them sometimes have restrictions or face difficulties.

Vonage, CallVantage and Verizon’s VoiceWing and say they let users transfer numbers out to any provider.

Broadvoice, the provider that Dixson used, lets users transfer out but says it's sometimes unable to hand over numbers it has assigned. That was the reason for Dixson's unsuccessful number transfer.

"That's one of the challenges that everyone has ... we're trying to figure out how to make customers more aware of everything," said spokesman Gene Cornfield.

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