Tesco VoIP takes numbers to the grave

Customers of Tesco's recently-demised VoIP service are being told they've lost their numbers, as number-portability is more of a recommendation than a requirement in the fixed world. Tesco announced it would shut down its Internet Phone service last month, though the service will still work for another week. But customers …

[Neil Kay]

Possible?

Of course it *IS* technically possible for any number to be routed through any provider and terminated where needed.

The problem is that it's just too much of a PITA to setup because the industry's infrastructure to make this easily doable is in a mess and so very few service providers can be arsed to spend the time contacting all the relevant parties to make the changes.

Yes, number database centralisation would be the answer - but centralised with whom? I know of some outfits that would still rightly bodge this kind of thing in an upwards direction.

[Chris007]

I was lucky...

...I only used the Tesco service for my outgoing calls only.

I would be major league pi55ed off if I had this has my home or even worse (as some people do) their main business contact number.

It is an absolute scandal that a company of Tesco's size is not doing more to help it's customers - surely it does enough business with C&W to apply some pressure such that both companies came out looking like good guys

[Anonymous Coward]

good time to cull

See this as a feature, new number so you loose all those annoying marketeers and only your nearest and dearest get your new number... win win on all counts!

[Uk_Gadget]

I hate TESCO....

.... for many reasons but to loose my [phone]xxx number is so bad.... Perhaps the Mods will let the last 3 digits through so everyone in the world can ring it and cause the operators network havoc... Have to wait 216 minutes to tell...

[It'sa Mea... Mario]

..checking who's actually holding the numbers

Theres an App for that..

UKnumbers

Works for all numbers I've tried.. not tried many VoiP numbers though