# Failed-port referral brief template | SourceX

Canonical: https://refer.sourcex.si/resources/number-porting-failure-resolution-referral-brief-template
Last updated: 2026-10-20

A company introduction about number porting failure resolution is one page of metadata your contact in provisioning can forward upward: company size, the business task, the record classes behind a failed port, the systems that hold them, years of history, a rough count of rejected ports, the dated access event if one exists, the open rights question, the record owner and the executive who can authorize a licensing discussion. It never carries port orders, customer names, CSR copies or exports. Copy the blank brief below, then check it against the completed Illustrative version.

This template is part of the [number porting failure resolution guide](/guides/workflow-number-porting-failure-resolution). Write it after the head of provisioning has agreed that you may describe the provider's failed-port history in general terms.

## Three rules before you fill anything in

**Describe, never copy.** Every entry is a description, a count, a range or a role. Each request names an account holder and lists their lines, and carriers owe confidentiality over that customer information under CPNI rules. If a field would tempt you to paste something from the order platform, write what the owner told you instead.

**Attribute every number.** "About 4,000 rejected ports, from a reason-code report run by the port desk lead" is useful. "4,000" with no source invites the question of who counted, and partners never count records themselves.

**Name the field that fails, not the order.** Industry ordering rules say which values a losing carrier checks. An ATIS letter to the number portability working group set the validation fields for non-simple, non-complex requests as account number, telephone number, ZIP code and a personal identifier, adding a service address number for non-simple requests. If the director says most rejections come from a mismatched address or account number, write that as a category. It tells SourceX what kind of back-and-forth each case holds without anyone opening a record.

## The blank failed-port brief

Copy this table into a document and complete the right-hand column in under twenty words per row.

| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Company | Full-time employees at peak, contractors excluded; services sold; customer mix (business, residential, wholesale) |
| Business task | The failed-port work in one line, from rejection to activation |
| Rejection pattern | The validation fields that fail most often, as categories: address, account number, identifier |
| Record classes | Names only: orders, corrections, rejection notices, customer record requests, firm order commitments, activation confirmations, tickets |
| Systems | Each system by category, with start year and whether it is staying or being replaced |
| Years of history | Earliest usable year per system, and any break at a past migration |
| Volume | Rough count of rejected ports, with who produced it and how |
| Linking | How a ticket finds its order: purchase order number, port request number, or manual matching |
| Access event | A dated change the company confirmed: platform contract end, mailbox retention limit, or "none scheduled" |
| Open question | The one thing nobody could answer, usually about other-carrier documents or overwritten supplements |
| Record owner | The role that administers or knows each system |
| Authorized contact | The executive who can approve a licensing discussion, plus the convener |

The table has no field for content. If the provider wants to show quality, SourceX asks for it later, under an agreement, after rights review.

## The fields consultants most often get wrong

**Systems.** Name the category before the product: "order and provisioning platform, being replaced next year" says more than a vendor name. Include the shared provisioning mailbox if rejections arrive by email, since it may hold notices the platform never captured.

**Linking.** Tickets and orders are often joined only by a purchase order number typed into a free-text field, and only from a certain year. Write the year the link starts. The [exception examples](/guides/number-porting-failure-resolution-exception-examples) show why an unlinked ticket loses the reason a port was corrected.

**Open question.** Pick one. The usual candidates are whether customer records and rejection notices from the losing carrier can be included, and whether the platform kept the original values after a correction overwrote them. Both are real unknowns; neither is the partner's to settle.

**Authorized contact.** The convener and the signer are rarely the same person: the head of provisioning convenes, and the CEO can authorize and sign. The [who-can-say-yes decision tree](/questions/who-can-license-number-porting-failure-resolution-records) covers the exceptions before you send anything.

## Completed brief: a regional business voice provider (Illustrative)

A fictional provider, invented for this page; not a real company, case or deal. A 340-person business voice and connectivity provider sells multi-line service to small and mid-sized companies and wins most of them by porting numbers from incumbents.

| Field | Completed entry (Illustrative) |
|---|---|
| Company | 340 full-time at peak, contractors excluded; business voice and internet; mostly small and mid-sized business accounts |
| Business task | Resolving rejected inbound ports for multi-line business accounts, from first rejection to activation |
| Rejection pattern | Mostly service address mismatches on multi-line accounts, then account numbers |
| Record classes | Orders with their corrections, rejection notices and reason codes, CSR requests, firm order commitments, activation confirmations, tickets |
| Systems | Order platform since 2020, being replaced; service desk since 2017, staying; provisioning shared mailbox since 2019 |
| Years of history | About six years of orders; tickets back to 2017 |
| Volume | About 4,000 rejected ports since 2020, from a reason-code report run by the port desk lead |
| Linking | Tickets carry the purchase order number from 2022 onward; earlier tickets matched by account name |
| Access event | Old platform read access ends at contract expiry; date confirmed in writing by the company |
| Open question | Whether losing-carrier documents in the mailbox can be included |
| Record owner | Head of provisioning for orders and mailbox; customer care director for tickets |
| Authorized contact | CEO, with general counsel; head of provisioning convenes |

Read it as a decision-maker would. The full chain runs from 2022, orders go further back, the deadline is real and dated by the company, and nothing identifies a customer, a line or a losing carrier.

## Sending it, and what it cannot settle

Pair the brief with a short covering note modeled on the [warm introduction brief](/resources/a-warm-introduction-brief-for-a-business-owner), or draft one in the [client opportunity brief generator](/tools/client-opportunity-brief-generator). If the provider is also exploring a sale, [how to sell a telecom company](/guides/how-to-sell-a-telecom-company) explains why a data decision and a sale process are separate tracks.

The brief does not decide whether anything can be licensed. What stays unknown until SourceX reviews it: SourceX's current data needs for failed-port histories, what rights review concludes about other-carrier documents and customer fields, the preparation required and whether an offer follows.

The provider needs 50+ full-time employees at peak (contractors excluded), documented operating history, rights to license and an authorized contact. Companies in the U.S., Canada and the EU qualify, as do companies in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore, South Africa, Latin America, the UAE and Saudi Arabia when at least 90% of the data is in English. Sign the Channel Partner Agreement before submitting; the first valid introduction within the 90-day window is credited when the company submits a verified application, with one partner per company.

## Next step

> **Refer a company. Earn up to $100,000.** Default reward: 25% of Actual Supplier Payout, capped at $100,000 cumulatively per referred company. Eligibility and payment conditions apply, and a signed Schedule A or addendum can differ. A lead, meeting or signature alone does not trigger payment.

When every row of the brief is filled from what the owners told you and the signer has agreed to be introduced, [register as a partner](/register), confirm the provider on [who qualifies](/who-qualifies) and read the [program terms](/terms) before you send it.

## Sources

- https://refer.sourcex.si/terms
- https://numberportability.com/sites/default/files/archives/ATIS_to_LNPA_WG_non_simple_non_complex__2014-11-04_G5Hd9fy.pdf
- https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/areas/privacy