By Bruce Clark, Porting Supervisor
We have been informed that the Letter of Authorisation (LOA) changes are no longer taking place from Monday 3rd August and instead this has been pushed back to Monday 7th September 2020.
The reason this has been pushed back is because Offta would like to make a few last-minute adjustments to make the LOA format a little more flexible and allow for more uses.
Throughout the recent NPP&CG meetings, it had been discussed (or rather, mentioned) that an LOA will now be “site-specific”, meaning that if an End User had multiple sites, a separate LOA would need to be requested for each one. This has been addressed and it’s believed that allowing them to hold multiple sites would be far more efficient for all involved within the porting process.
Upon confirmation that the new LOA format would be pushed back a further month, this gave some providers the opportunity to raise a few further points that may help in ensuring the LOA is as simple and as useful as possible.
For example, the new format has a “Count of numbers” field which requires the end user to confirm exactly how many numbers are included in a range they’ve given. On the face of it, being able to see how many numbers are on a request at a quick glance could be useful. However, if an End User accidentally miscounts / mistypes this it could add days if not more to the porting request, especially if it makes it all the way to the top of the supply chain, to be rejected at the instant a porting request is submitted.
Another area of concern is the cancellation field that was at the top of the new format. While knowing that this was for the Gaining supply chain’s use, this had caused a little confusion with Communication Providers. In the format that was due to be in circulation on Monday 3rd August, there was a tick box to confirm if an LOA was being used to submit a port, or to cancel the port… This was purely for the End User’s direct provider, for confirmation that a request had been cancelled. On the other hand, if an End User wishes for a port to be cancelled, then an email / phone call / any form of communication should still be sufficient. It’s been concluded that this was just one more way that a port could be cancelled, but due to it’s confusing nature, and the likelihood of this being the End Users way to cancel a request, the cancellation field is also being looked into and potentially being removed.
There are a few other small changes that are being looked into, and will likely be a topic discussed in the next NPP&CG meeting this coming week. As soon as we receive the next version of the updated LOA format, we’ll ensure that this is shared and published in our Support Centre.
