[AusNOG] Problems with ported number - ideas?

[Ross Wheeler]

Hoping someone here might be able to give me a point in the right 
direction, because I'm hitting brick walls at every turn.

For the last 12 months, I've been trying to get a customers telephone 
numbers ported out of Telstra and into AAPT so we can deliver their 
services over VoIP, with host of extra functionality that their previous 
system couldn't do.

Telstra made the process unnecessarily difficult, rejecting request after 
request with reasons that were undecipherable, but which in the end appear 
to have been because of several numbers that were "part of" the service 
but which the customer was unaware of. They were not listed on the bill, 
and the customer had no knowledge of them even when they were finally 
identified.

Regardless of that, the port finally "completed" last friday afternoon, we 
were getting calls which were being passed to and handled properly by the 
equipment at the customers location. (These were supplied and programmed 
by a third party, not us - but are working properly).

Yesterday, the customer became aware that several people have been 
attempting to call their office but not getting through.

Having spoken to a couple of the people experiencing problems, it's 
identical symptoms: 
"The number just rings out then goes to a Telstra message bank -  who 
advises that we have dialled an invalid number and not part of this 
service."

Interestingly, both parties I spoke to are with telstra, and located in 
the same geographic area (same exchange I think).

Telstra assure the customer that the port has completed and that they are 
not "interfering with" the calls in any way.

AAPT assure me that they've completed everything properly.

Others calling the same number get through fine, each time.
Sniffing the trunk to my Asterisk box, I don't see the call even being 
offered to me when it's from one of these origins that don't work, yet if 
I get those people to call one of my other numbers - delivered over the 
same trunk to the same asterisk box, it works fine.

The calling parties are not presenting any callerID, which makes it hard 
for troubleshooting, but I see plenty of OTHER calls with no CLIP being 
handled properly.

Who the heck do I go to to get it resolved given I've no contract or 
service with telstra and they've already told the customer that it's not 
them?

Any bright ideas?
TIA, R.