What Happens While Your Number is Being Ported?

What’s the first concern you have when switching phone service providers? It probably won’t take you very long to answer. You’re probably going to be worried about what is going on with your long-held business phone number while your new provider is porting it into the service.

It can be confusing and a bit “unknown” as to what you should expect during the process. But there is actually nothing to worry about, and in this article we will go into what you need to know about porting your phone number.

 

Your Number is Still Your Phone Number

One of the more common misconceptions about porting a phone number is that the new provider takes ownership of the number. You absolutely retain ownership of your number, and the FCC guarantees that your provider will allow you to transfer your number out if you decide to switch again to another service provider.

It can be expensive to change your phone number on business cards, brochures, marketing campaigns, vehicles & more. By porting your number over, you can avoid the unnecessary costs associated with making these changes also.

Your number is your number. The thing that is being transferred during a port is merely the phone service from one carrier to another; ownership is not being transferred. Which obviously offers some peace of mind if you didn’t know that!

 

Here’s How Number Porting Works

Let’s say you’ve been a Verizon subscriber for a long time, and you have a current, active phone number which you purchased from them or acquired it for free.

Then, let’s say that you have fallen out of love with Verizon and have decided to switch to Talkroute, meaning that you’ll need to port that number to Talkroute (the fact that Talkroute is a virtual provider doesn’t make a difference for porting).

What happens when you port is that the current carrier who is keeping that number active (Verizon) approves your number to be released, or “unlocks” it so that it can be transferred away, and the new carrier (Talkroute) takes the phone number and activates it again as the new carrier.

 

 

 

Will You Miss Any Phone Calls?

Despite popular belief, no, you will never miss any calls because your number will never be out of service at any point, so there is no downtime. The reason for this is that, during the porting process, your current carrier keeps the number active during the transfer all the way up until the moment that it transfers to your new carrier.

At that moment, it seamlessly becomes active with the new carrier. That’s why it’s also important to not cancel service with the previous provider until the port is complete.

Talkroute processes all port requests within 1-2 business days. Once the port has been processed, the request is submitted to the carrier to release the phone number. The time required to release the number varies from provider to provider. The average time to complete a port request from the date of submission is 5-10 business days.

Hopefully, this sets your mind at ease when you port your existing phone number into a new phone service. It honestly is a pretty seamless transition and isn’t anything you should stress much about. You should be up & running with your ported number in no time.