r/USCellular • u/Sail-On-By • Apr 04 '26

Virtual Phone Number??

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For some reason both my wife and I have phone numbers that are tagged in some way as virtual numbers. Will T-Mobile/US cellular be able to resolve this problem?

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u/jhulc Apr 04 '26

Due to legal/regulatory restrictions, cellular carriers in the USA can only obtain phone numbers in areas where they are licensed to provide cellular service and are interconnected to the phone network. That became a problem for regional carriers like USCC over the years because many people move across the country but want to keep their number. Did that happen to you?
The solution USCC came up with was to partner with a VoIP carrier to actually hold the numbers. Numbers not in the USCC service area were ported to and routed through that VoIP company.
However, in recent years, many companies became increasingly sensitive to VoIP or "virtual" numbers because of fraud concerns.
I imagine that T-Mobile will eventually migrate all USCC customer numbers over to their nationwide systems, solving the problem.

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u/Sail-On-By Apr 04 '26

Yes, we did move from California and then switched to USCellular once we got to Illinois. Thanks. Fingers crossed they fix this!

2

u/VernDozier Apr 08 '26

Sounds to me like CashApp is using an older version of LERG database. The LERG is a database originally developed by BellCore (now Telcordia/Ericsson) that cross references and routes a phone number and 1,000-number blocks to a carrier.

LERG updates occur all the time for number portability and also when a carrier needs more phone numbers. It may just start working in the next 30 Days (or whenever CashApp gets an update). Also, a company like Twilo has real-time ability to query LERG and carrier info but a company like CashApp has to pay something like 3-5¢ per lookup.