CellNUVO Outage Timeline

Telecom
1

August 16

CellNUVO announce they are moving to Red Pocket (not named at the time). As part of the update to a new platform, CellNUVO advise that an iPhone app will also be released. New activations are suspended and "minor service interruptions" are expected.

Retrospectively, we learn that at this time:

a) CellNUVO has been working with all partners for 3 months
b) They are in the final testing phase
c) They plan to make the switch around Sep 4

August 18

Outages are reported

August 19

CellNUVO provided this update:

we were in the last segment of our testing when one company that provided back office and other operational services for CellNUVO notified us they were closing their business immediately. This forced us to expedite the switch to our new platform. We have been working closely with our partners and carriers to make this transition over the last few days.

August 25

CellNUVO provided a further update

[i]For the last few days you may have noticed issues with your service. As noted in previous updates, these issues were a direct result of our carrier partner closing their business and operations. We apologize for any inconvenience during this period.

We are pleased to announce that as of close of business today we will have completed our transition to our new carrier partner, Red Pocket.[/i]

October 25

As of writing, service is still not fully restored. Several weeks passed before service was restored to some. Random outages have taken place throughout the period and continue to do so. The integration between CellNUVO and Red Pocket is not complete. Some have not had their original numbers restored, some have lost their numbers. Others have been unable to port out their number for 2 months.

2

Working days between events (based on 5 day working week)

65 days - Work performed prior to start of Final Testing (3 months)

12 days - Time remaining for Final Testing = Announcement on Aug 16 to Planned Switch Date of Sep 4

8 days - Time taken to perform switch as a result of MVNE closing (includes weekend days) = Aug 18 (reports of first outages) to Aug 25 (announced transition was complete)

43 days - Working days between today (Oct 25) and announcement that transition was complete (Aug 25).

Analysis

The plan was to spend 12 more days of testing and then switch.

Instead the switch was expedited presumably with little testing.

Being generous, let's say the 8 days to expedite had no testing and another 12 days were still required.

In that case, there needed to be another 12 working days from Aug 25 to test and properly complete the switch. Remember, the switch is not the bulk of the work. It is essentially implementing the 3 months of work that took place before Aug 16.

In that case, the transition could have been complete and fully tested by Sep 12.

30 working days have passed since then and service is not fully restored.

My Conclusion

If CellNUVO's stated transition timeframe was realistic and they were competently managing the entire project, then the current situation should not be happening even if there was a surprise from their previous MVNE.

Also bear in mind that the iPhone app did not materialize when the move to the new platform was complete as was promised. That is now 2 months ago. Another sign that CellNUVO are not competently managing their projects.

3

Another aspect of CellNUVO's explanation that is very peculiar is the following:

August 19 (a Saturday): We have been working closely with our partners and carriers to make this transition over the last few days.

Notice this is plural so it means 2 days or more. For 2 days or more, they had been working on the transition.

In which case at a minimum it means they were working on the transition on both Friday August 18 and Thursday August 17.

Now note that Wednesday August 16 is the day that they announced the move to Red Pocket. At this point, there was only the indication of minor service disruption and a vague completion date.

Yet immediately after this, they had an unexpected problem which caused them to expedite the transition.

Analysis

One explanation that has been offered is that the MVNE pulled out as soon as they heard CellNUVO's announcement. But that really doesn't make sense as a triggering reason because CellNUVO advised that all partners were fully aware of the timeframe they were working towards.

I feel that it is too much of a coincidence that the MVNE stopped providing service at the exact same time that CellNUVO announced that there would be minor service disruptions.

I believe that CellNUVO mismanaged this. Either they mismanaged the relationship with the MVNE or there was inadequate project planing and management, specifically management of exactly what would happen to customers during the transition. As Tom Mannix says, the buck stops with him.

And the fact that 2 months later, service is not fully restored, pretty much confirms the idea that CellNUVO have been the incompetent party all along.

It is far far more believable and in keeping with what has been seen and demonstrated that CellNUVO got something wrong here rather than a company run by a person who has been in the MVNE business for decades and generated tens of millions of dollars of revenue from working with many other players in the space.

For that matter, any problems being seen now are very unlikely to be something to do with Red Pocket and much more likely to be about CellNUVO.

4

hey it really sucks but panhandlers cannot demand cash.

5

Wow you are still certain a person/group (Mobile Matterz/PC Management/Linda somebody) with two failing or failed companies is not significantly to blame in this? :silly: If you were as neutral as you say you are you would recognize that this is a serious possibility and as well as blaming cellnuvo for issues you would point out that the other parties could equally have been at fault for various aspects.

eg port requests were found to have been submitted to redpocket for at least one person with lines that were supposed to have unrecoverable numbers. Why were they not enacted upon. Was it PC Management not responding or redpocket? Should cellnuvo have been more proactive in following up? Should redpocket have been more proactive in following up with cellnuvo saying there was an issue. Should PC Management have made sure all lines were properly transferred and sat down with cellnuvo to make sure all lines were properly transitioned in a professional way. Was PC Management upset it lost the contract to redpocket and was being difficult. Lots of ifs but who is to blame is quite frankly all three and not just cellnuvo.

No time to go through all the rest right now. But not being a user you are not aware of many things and made some wrong assumptions. More on that later if I have time. Thanks for the timeline - a few errors and gaps but mostly right. The opinions are wild and without firm evidence but hey free speech bordering on slander is allowed I guess.

6

Please define what you mean by "this".

7

Any part, that you assert has nothing to do with the failed company, that this said company was directly involved in, that was pertinent to the issue being discussed.

By the way are you a lawyer or in the legal profession? Just curious.

8

CellNUVO said that the "failed" company caused them to expedite the transition.

CellNUVO said the transition was "completed" by close of business on Aug 25.

You can theoretically blame the "failed" company for not transferring the numbers, but I don't believe you can blame them for anything else after Aug 25 since CellNUVO themselves say the transition was complete.

9

Depends how you define "the transition". On Aug 25 (I assume this date is correct - hasn't been checked) they did in fact transition to redpocket. Original numbers however were not transitioned at that time and we were instead given temporary numbers on redpocket (with some exceptions and sometime a delay). But we were on redpocket. So the failed/failing company still had possession of the original numbers and certainly can be responsible for some part in the number transition issues after that. With numbers unavailable they certainly could have been resposible for some part in "holding numbers hostage" so people could not port out when they wanted to. Cellnuvo should have reported them to the FCC - maybe they did.

I don't think I was blaming the failed company for anything else. Though expediting any project can potentially lead to more errors slipping through obviously. I for one have a line with full service and have had it for at least a month. The current periods of lost service, the inability to top up at times are all squarely with the cellnuvo-redpocket partnership. The lack of communication is all cellnuvo.

10

Before you just clarified yourself just now, you had stated the following .........

Since it was not clear how you were apportioning blame, I asked you to define "this" which you answered in a very obtuse way. It is good to be clear that since Aug 18, excluding the topic of who is to blame for missing original numbers, the "failed" company is (possibly) responsible for 8 days of service issues and as of today (Oct 25), CellNUVO are most definitely responsible for 61 days of service issues and counting.

In my opinion, that ratio makes CellNUVO the significant party to blame. However, we do not have enough details about what efforts and obstructions were undertaken with regards to recovering original numbers.

In any case, I believe you now agree with me. Progress!

11

I like a good conspiracy theory! They are frequently so very entertaining if you don't look too close.

This one seems to be missing a few elements, including Jimmy Hoffa, the moon landing, and, most importantly,
Karl! Karl! Karl!

You're trying too hard to shoehorn bits into a preconceived picture. Just because you can make a jigsaw piece fit somewhere with a hammer does not mean that's how the puzzle piece fits. It's true that all of us are playing with the jigsaw without benefit of seeing the 'big picture' on the outside of the box.

12

I do believe it is I who has achieved the impossible - that you now agree that there is in fact a "failed" company which you did not seem to believe before. That you now agree they could be partly responsible for aspects of the past two months which at the start of this thread you also did not seem to think was possible.

On the other hand I have not said anything I haven't said a million times -that the current service issues are the fault of the cellnuvo-redpocket partnership and cellnuvo are totally responsible for communication issues.

13

More progress.

I never said there was no possibility of there being a company that stopped providing service to CellNUVO. I simply said that the timing of it was suspicious and that it was too simplistic to believe that said company made a unilateral and unreasonable decision.

Knowing what we know about how CellNUVO incompetently manage their affairs, it is entirely believable that CellNUVO were ultimately to blame for that company no longer providing them service.

That is what I have always contested but you and others misrepresented my position.

14

No and I never claimed that above. And you talk about misrepresentation. I claimed that "you now agree that there is in fact a "failed" company" and that, "you now agree they could be partly responsible for aspects of the past two months. "

On 16th October you said that the,

Now we know there is a related entity PC Management that looks out of business that was involved with cellnuvo and also some other related company in bankruptcy that may or may not have been involved.

and now you say today that,

So there you now agree with me that there is a failed company and that they could be partly responsible for service issues. Progress indeed.

You mean "that company" that looks dead, out of business, defunct? So can't provide services any more. So cellnuvo caused that?? That is your worse story yet.
So let me get this straight to avoid any come backs about not understanding you.... you think that cellnuvo was so incompetent they drove another company out of business and then and only then had all these major issues themselves because of it?!

15

I believe we have now shown enough reasonable doubt in JtSR71's arguments to conclude that Cellnuvo are probably telling the truth about what happened.

  1. That there was a company that failed (seems like this is PC Management) and for whatever reason there have been problems during the transition.

  2. The main issue with the transition ie numbers being lost or delayed could well be caused by the old entity PC Management or not. Or even Redpocket or not. But we do know that attempts were made to get numbers back by Cellnuvo. They are trying. Whether they did enough to recover numbers is unknown. Whether PC Management and the Mobile Matterz group are causing difficulties is unknown.

  3. But all blame regarding current service lies with cellnuvo and redpocket. All communication issues lie with cellnuvo.

Good enough for everyone. Can we move on?

16

I can move on and discuss the future of Cellnuvo

17

It's probably better to restate what I am saying because I think you are missing the nuance in your quest to disagree.

There are a range of explanations for the comment by CellNUVO that their "partner carrier" closed.

I am drawing attention to the following facts:

  1. The closure seems to have occurred on exactly the same date as CellNUVO announced they would shortly transition to Red Pocket.

This is remarkable. Not before, nor not after, but exactly at the same time. Furthermore, we know that the partner carrier was aware of the move all along and had been involved in the transition work for the prior 3 months. It was not the case that as soon as they heard the departure that they got annoyed and decided to drop CellNUVO in it.

  1. We understand there to be a relationship between Mobile Matterz and PC Management. We understand that Sprint called PC Management 2 months after they closed and successfully had a number released. Additionally, numbers were released after the partner carrier closed through CellNUVO's own efforts presumably with PC Management.

This does not suggest that the partner carrier was closed. The fact that there were employees available to release numbers suggests to me that Mobile Matterz / PC Management could have continued co-operating with CellNUVO.

The question is why weren't CellNUVO able to come to an arrangement and pay them for a couple more weeks to not inconvenience their customers.

  1. We are by now all aware that CellNUVO is incompetent when it comes to managing development and this transition. Nothing is done on time and it is buggy. Mobile Matterz on the other hand successfully launched and powered CellNUVO, was / is a Sprint wholesaler and is related to PC Management who were in business for over 20 years as an MVNE amongst other things.

It is entirely probable that what happened in the transition was gross incompetence by CellNUVO which Mobile Matterz no longer wanted to be a part of. Looking at it now, there has been a full 2 months more work than expected and things are still not complete. CellNUVO may very well have been Mobile Matterz only MVNO and therefore Mobile Matterz shut down that part of their business as part of booting CellNUVO. They just did it a couple of weeks earlier for reasons we do not know, but whatever the reasons, they reflect more on CellNUVO than anyone else.

I don't think anyone here would want to work with CellNUVO. There is no reason to think that after working with them for a while, professionals in the mobile space want to either. Maybe Red Pocket are regretting it too right now. Again, look at this transition that after an initial 3 months of planned work is still not on track after an unplanned extra 2 months. Red Pocket must be annoyed that their customer service is dealing with so many CellNUVO problems. If they were sensible, they would have made customer service interactions a chargeable service in their contract with CellNUVO.

18

And i will restate. You are wrong. It is remarkable you are hinging all on a group of companies with not one but two businesses that have actually failed or are in the process of failing. If anything it leans more to the complete opposite to what you suggest. I am more inclined to trust that redpocket did their due diligence and found the transition to be above board.

In any case I am looking to the future and I feel more comfortable with a partner like redpocket behind cellnuvo than whoever they had before. They need to put the past behind them. Fix these top up issues and then we can get on with having uninterrupted service and talking about better things.

It was fun but I wasted enough time on this.

19

I don't believe I am wrong. CellNUVO have demonstrably been incompetent with regards to managing this transition, implementing the integration with Red Pocket and communicating. I called it very early because the signs were obvious they didn't know what they were doing. It's now approaching 2.5 months and nobody knows when it will be fixed or when they can use their Gold for service.

I often mentioned RingPlus & Karl because what was going on here was patently similar to the amateur hour we'd previously seen.

As to the partners CellNUVO worked with, they were an extremely reliable partner. You yourself have said there were no prior problems and they launched and powered CellNUVO. The fact that the owners created spin offs or had bankruptcies is not a de facto sign of problems, but could be as easily attributed to a changing market place, eg launching new companies to change direction as well as using managed bankruptcies to reduce financial exposure for the owners or even personal circumstances eg one of the owners does not seem to be active anymore. By the look of things, they've made a ton of money over the years.

The issue here isn't about the reliability of Red Pocket. They seem to know what they are doing. The issue is the behavior of CellNUVO. I really wonder what Red Pocket make of what they see. A company barely communicating to customers having severe service issues for 2.5 months. It's unheard of!

20

Looking to the future is great for me because I have my ph#, but the ABSOLUTE BIGGEST PROBLEM for many folks reading this forum is that CellNUVO lost theirs.

Read the other thread again.
https://www.nthcircle.com/forum/cellnuvo/828-phone-number-restored-directly-with-sprint?start=10#13952

The OP has a solution, but even better JTSR71 points to a broader more pragmatic path because the best solution shouldn't involve having to sign up with Sprint (I'd hate to waste the hard credit inquiry, plus other reasons). The "more comfortable with a partner like redpocket" aspect of your satisfaction doesn't come into play if it is Sprint or CellMNUVO or PC Management that can solve the ph# problem, while we know that redpocket cannot solve it.

Open your eyes.