Porting To VoIP - How Long Will It Take to Port Your Existing
Land Line Telephone Number to a VoIP Provider?
By Chris Landry
When you decide to make the leap from Traditional Land
Line Telephone service to a VoIP provider, most people want to take
their existing telephone number with them to the new VoIP provider.
By doing this, the customer doesn’t have to send a note to all of
the friends and family to let them know that they are going to be
changing their number. The only problem is that in most cases,
it may take a VoIP provider anywhere from 3 to 8 weeks to port your
number from the existing telephone company to the VoIP
provider. Conversely, for a wireless-to-wireless transfer, the
porting process should take approximately two and a half hours from
the time the porting request is made of the old carrier.
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The FCC has not mandated a specific time frame for the
wireless-to-wireless porting process. Two and a half hours is the
time frame agreed upon by the wireless industry, and the FCC
encourages carriers to use that time frame. In time, I would
imagine that the FCC put that pressure on Land Line Telephone
service and the VoIP industry as well to increase the
speed in which a Land Line gets provisioned to a VoIP
line.
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There are many reasons it takes so long, but the
biggest reason is that there are so many hands involved with getting
the number ported. First of all, most of the VoIP providers lease
the phone numbers from larger phone companies. So, they must get the
port request for you, then request the number be ported from their
leasing company, then the leasing company must in turn request that
the number be ported by the existing telephone company. Then to get
confirmation of the port back to the customer, the same steps are
taken in the reverse. Generally these companies will batch the port
requests by waiting to get a significant number of requests before
actually placing a request.
You do not need to wait for your number to be ported
before your VoIP service will work. The VoIP provider will provide
you with a temporary assigned telephone number to use while your
existing number is being ported. Generally, it is necessary that you
maintain your local telephone service until the porting of your
number has taken place. Also, be sure to fill out the
“Porting” information correctly. Make sure you have put the
same exact name, address, and telephone number as is printed on your
local phone bill. If this is not done, it could delay the process
for weeks.
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