May 2013 - NumberGarage News

NumberGarage™ News

AT&T GoPhone® with LTE, T-Mobile with “No Contracts”, What Next?

SIMPLE is, what Simple does! The NumberGarage™ Team likes “simple” because there is less confusion. We also rule by common sense, and common sense can only be present with transparency. It appears that the BIG telephone companies that we all love, or hate, or don’t care either way have found success in what makes small businesses successful — the ability to use common sense!

T-Mobile announced in April 2013 that the “Early Termination Fee” (ETF) was a thing of the past in their business model. This is an awesome quote by their CEO, John T. Legere, “If we suck this month, drop us. Go somewhere else.” CHEERS! To you Mr. Legere! NumberGarage™ does not have any termination fees, and we have been a month-to-month service since 2008. We have also ported many a T-Mobile phone number to, and we will continue to refer our customers to T-Mobile when they port-out of NumberGarage™ as well.

AT&T announced May 24, 2013 their PCWorld / TechHive Awardeed Top Spot LTE network is available for their GoPhone® product! Wait! PrePaid cellular has LTE access! It looks like AT&T is jumping into the common sense business too. AT&T has invested $98 billion into its operations over the past five years, and with this kind of PrePaid friendly business with access to the fastest wireless network available might mean conversions of sales are in their favor. If you want to meet your analyst numbers, you must have NEW customers.

The only disconnect for AT&T is the fact the LTE for GoPhone® access is for NEW customers ONLY. This is where NumberGarage™ comes into value. Port your old cell phone number to NumberGarage.com and go get a NEW GoPhone® with LTE. You will be able to forward your calls easily from your old cell phone number to your new AT&T GoPhone® number using NumberGarage.com FORWARD service.

Vertical Service Codes, or CLASS Codes

Telephones can do so many things for us in regard to managing our communication. The Vertical Service Code (VSC) is the technical name for the code we press for a telephone function. As an example, Caller ID Privacy is “star six-seven,” or “*67.” Dialing a star is easier than pressing “one-one” or “11.” The star in this case is also an asterisk, but we have always called this symbol a “star” for obvious reasons – it looks like a star. Therefore, it is “star” and dialing “six-seven” afterword blocked your identity before you dial a phone number. These functions are also called, “star codes.”

AT&T coined the phrase, “CLASS CODES™” to explain these telephone functions or services. CLASS is an acronym for Custom Local Area Signaling Services, and you almost have to take a class to understand CLASS codes and what they all do.

AT&T then trademarked the word, “CLASS Codes™” that is the acronym to explain these telephony functions. Then, someone with the North American Numbering Plan Administration chose to explain these CLASS codes as, “Vertical Service Codes” to avoid the use of the Trademarked word, “CLASS.” They were not going to pay AT&T to use this word, and therefore they changed the name.

There was not much uniformity in telco back in the day, and various Switch manufacturers wanted to differentiate themselves. So some programed their switches to use the “hash” or “hashtag” as it is popularly known now. Also called the “pound key” too. Dialing, 72# was the same as dialing, *72 for call forwarding. What is interesting is these codes will forward phone calls, *72, #72, 1172, and 72#. They all do the same thing if you dial # before a code the code technically NOT a Vertical Service Code like *72, or 1172 are.

You do not have to dial a VSC to use the NumberGarage™ FORWARD service. We assume you have more than one phone number, and you might be in need of simplifying your communication.