VoiceLog Offers Third Party Verification for Wireless Number Portability

VoiceLog is offering a special package of services for wireless carriers to confirm customer's changes of their numbers from one carrier to another. New rules allowing customers to move their number from one carrier to another go into effect November 24. Federal rules leave unclear if carriers must verify customer orders, but many carriers will use verification for their own protection.

(PRWEB)November 3, 2003- Gaithersburg, MD// With less than a month to go before number portability rules go into effect for the wireless industry, VoiceLog announces a special Third Party Verification package, designed specifically for wireless companies. Under the new plan, wireless companies can use speech-recognition-driven third party verification to confirm their customers desire to move their wireless number from one service to another for as little as $0.50 per order. In addition, carriers who sell bundled packages - including local and long distance services in combination with wireless orders - will benefit from special discounts.

VoiceLog developed the new program in order to give wireless carriers a tool to document customer requests to change wireless carriers while porting telephone numbers to another carrier. This product will allow wireless carriers to defend themselves against complaints by competitors, customers, or state or federal consumer protection agencies that numbers were ported to a new service provider without customer agreement. In addition, although current federal regulations exempt commercial mobile radio services -- a category that includes cellular and PCS carriers -- from verification requirements for carrier changes as long as they are not required to provide equal access to common carriers for the provision of telephone toll services" (see FCC rules: CFR 47 subpart K section 64.1100), this exception in the rules was created before number portability was mandated and it is unlikely that regulators considered the potential for unauthorized service changes on customers wireless numbers. It would not be surprising to see the FCC repeal this exemption once number portability is implemented.

Third party verification is the perfect solution to ensuring that customers get the services they ordered," said Larry Leikin, Vice President of VoiceLog. TPV is a time-tested, fast and cost-effective method to prevent customers from having their numbers changed to a different carrier without their permission and to minimize disputes between carriers. In fact, although TPV is now an FCC requirement for many orders, it was originally developed by AT&T and MCI as a way for those carriers to avoid disputes between each other. Regardless of whether its required by the regulations, we believe many carriers will choose TPV for its business appeal."

In addition to protecting customers from unauthorized switches in carriers, VoiceLog offers a variation on Third Party Verification that satisfies the requirements of the federal E-Sign Act. Under the Act, electronic signatures are treated as valid and binding as traditional signatures. VoiceLog allows a customer to sign" an electronic contract for cellular services using only a telephone, thus enabling cellular carriers to close sales of cellular services over the telephone, without requiring the physical signature of the customer.

In addition to its verification services, VoiceLog now offers Call Center Recording Services, allowing call centers to have full-time recording and monitoring capabilities on a pay as you go" basis. VoiceLog Call Center Recording services include full-time and on-demand recording, quality monitoring and record scoring, transcription, and recording storage and archival.

VoiceLog is the world leader in Third Party Verification, serving more telecommunications, electric utility and natural gas companies than any other -- worldwide. VoiceLog third party verification services include speech recognition and touch-tone driven automated verification, web and email-based verification callback services and live agent verification. VoiceLog features include 24x7 availability, 99.999% reliability, 100% digital recording and playback accessible by Web or telephone, Any Language on Earth language support, and a host of additional offerings.

For more information about VoiceLog, contact Larry Leikin at 301-230-2129 or lleikin@voicelog.com or visit our websites at www.voicelog.com or www.virtuallogger.com.

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