The process normally takes two to three working days, according to Telstra.
mBox issued a statement to its account holders Monday saying that Primus Telecom had managed to secure final dates for completion of the porting process.
"Primus have told us that they hope to have final 'move' dates out of Telstra tomorrow, 13th November 2001 and our numbers 'moved' by the end of this week," read the statement delivered to mBox's customers, which numbered over 100,000 prior to attempts to move its dial-in numbers.
The date in the statement appears now to be incorrect. Primus and Telstra finalised the negotiations for the move yesterday.
"We have agreed dates for provisioning between the 20th and 22nd of November according to mBox's priorities," said Graham Salt, public affairs manager Telstra infrastructure services and wholesale.
mBox's troubles with Telstra began when the closure of UUNET and regulatory pressures conspired to force the company to switch its numbers to Primus Telecom exchanges. The competitive network carrier lodged an application to transfer the numbers late in September, on mBox's behalf. However Telstra rejected the application twice.
mBox referred the matter to the Australian Competition Consumer Commision, the Australian Consumers Association and lodged a complaint with the Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman. However, the company did not note a marked difference in the Telstra's attitude to the problem until a story about its plight appeared in the Australian Financial Review, on Tuesday, November 6th according to mBox.
"We have been advised today, 12th November 2001 by the State Manager for Primus Telecom, that this article has finally brought our plight to the attention of the upper management of Telstra," said the company in the statement released Monday.
Telstra concedes that mBox's problem has been given higher priority, recently.
"It's fair to say that Primus and ourselves have rolled up our sleeves to get this fixed," said Salt.
Kerryn Garner, TIO public affairs officer said that the ombudsman investigations haven't revealed any foul play on the part of Telstra.
"They're taking a while to go through all the numbers," she said. "It [the problem] appears to be a technical issue more than a commercial one."
However, Primus Telecom national manager of corporate affairs, George Hazim, finds the explanation a little implausible.
"To say that it's technically difficult is totally inconceivable," he said. "It should take no longer than a week," he added later.
Regardless of whether the explanation is correct, Hazim said that the length of technical delay experienced by Primus and mBox is unacceptable for a deregulated industry environment.
"It appears that there is some discrepancy in the numbers to be ported over," said Salt offering explanation for the delay.
Barksdale Brown finds Telstra's explanation "interesting" because mBox provided the Australian telecommunications giant with its own records in order to facilitate the porting process.
"Telstra have access to all the information," he said. "We provided them with the most recent records of our numbers listed on our latest invoice."
He suggested that Telstra is struggling with a discrepancy between records held by the company internally. mBox's decision to switch to Telecom Primus, involves taking the numbers from Telstra's retail arm and bringing them under the jurisdiction of Telstra Infrastructure Services and Wholesale. Telstra's internal regulation prevents the two departments from sharing information.
This is not the first time that Brown has experienced problems with Telstra's services. He claims that Telstra's failure to understand his business led to an incident where over 100,000 of his customer's messages were directed into the inbox of a single account holder.
Brown remains optimistic about mBox but realistic about the impact that the prolonged outage will have on the company.
"It's certain we've lost face with our customers. It's certain we've 'lost' customers but I won't know how many till next week," he said.
Nothing changes in T(h)elstra. They continue to bully, harass and delay at every opportunity. They just might GET the message when their market share falls dramatically.
Now lets have competition with the dolts at ADSL.