Difference between revisions of "Phone number porting"

Revision as of 12:52, 16 December 2010

You can move your existing home or mobile telephone number over to XMission Voice. The process is called Porting, and most of the work is handled by your existing phone provider and our switch technicians. This guide covers residential phone porting. For information on business porting, please contact our sales department, or your account manager.

Requirements for porting

You can port your existing telephone number over to XMission at any time, as long as the following requirements are met:

• The number is a Utah based landline, VoIP or mobile number - You can only port Utah based phone numbers (801, 435 and the new 385 area code)
• You are the authorized account holder - We require authorization from the account holder on the phone number that will be ported over to us.
• The account holding the phone number is active - The account with your current provider must be active in order for us to initiate the porting process. We cannot port numbers on accounts which are on-hold, cancelled or pending cancellation.
• A Letter of Authorization (LOA) is submitted for the number(s) you are porting over - A letter filled out by you, which gives us formal authorization to begin the porting process. We must have this signed letter faxed, emailed or mailed in.

Please note that there may be some additional requirements from your existing carrier that need to be met in order for us to port a phone number over. If there are any issues which prevent the porting of your telephone number to XMission Voice, we will let you know.

The porting process

When you decide to port a number over to XMission Voice, you should ensure that the account with your current phone provider is current and active before requesting a port. You may also want to verify that the account with your current phone provider is able to support phone call forwarding, in case there are additional delays with your port. This will allow the full use of your telephone service on XMission via use of a temporary forwarding number while the porting process continues.

Please allow for up to 10 business days for a phone number to port, from the day that the port request is accepted by your carrier. In most cases, porting may only take a few days, but some carriers may take longer.

Contact our Sales department (Monday-Friday 9am-6pm) to add XMission Voice to your account. After verifying information, they will set an install date, and email you the LOA which needs to be filled out and either faxed, emailed or mailed back to us before we can begin the porting process.

Our XMission Voice administrators will go over the information in the LOA and submit the request. At this point, the port request will either be accepted, or refused for one of several reasons (Please see the section below for more information).

When a port is approved, there is nothing more that needs to be done by you. We will receive notification of a date from your carrier that indicates when the telephone number will be ported over, and if that date is different from your install date, we will let you know. Otherwise, the phone number will port over on the date that was agreed on when you contacted Sales. When the number ports over, you may contact the previous phone provider to cancel your account. In some cases, once a number ports over, this is done automatically. Please contact your current provider for more information.

Porting over on UTOPIA

XMission will submit a request for your telephone number to be ported over on the day of your UTOPIA service install. If you have existing service with UTOPIA and are switching from another provider, we will submit a request for port, and set a date to have a UTOPIA installer come over to install and configure the XMission Voice telephone adapter.

When the installer shows up, they will connect the device to your home phone wiring, test out the line, and verify functionality.

If the UTOPIA install falls on a date before your number is due to port, the installer will attempt to set up a forward which will allow you to use your phone service like normal until the port date. In order for this configuration to work, you will need to make sure that call forwarding is an option with your current phone provider. We cannot make this configuration work if call forwarding is available on the account with your current provider. Again, this is only required if your install date is set a few days before the port date.

Porting over on DSL

If you are porting a number over on which you have dialtone and DSL service, your existing provider will assign a new phone number to your DSL account. This number will not include dialtone service, and is simply a circuit ID so that your DSL service continues to function normally. In most cases, you will not need to contact your DSL provider to initiate this change. The port request should initiate it for you automatically.

After placing your order with our Sales department, we will ship you an XMission Voice telephone adapter which has been pre-configured with your account settings. This telephone adapter will include instructions on how to connect it to your DSL modem or router, and your telephone.

On the day that your phone number ports over, you may no longer hear a dialtone on the provider you ported from. Follow the instructions, connect the equipment as indicated, and you will be able to begin using your XMission Voice service immediately.

Please note, connecting the equipment before the port date is not recommended. If, on the port date, you find that you no longer have DSL service, or the DSL light on your modem will not stop flashing, please contact your DSL provider for assistance.

Delays with porting

A port may be delayed for any of the reasons listed. If the delay will have any impact on your port date, we may recommend that you move your install to a later date.

• Account information does not match up with records - The information in the LOA must match the information in your current phone provider's accounting system. Name, address, apartment or unit number, city and zip must match completely.

• The phone number does not match up with the account - The number submitted is not the number on the account, or belongs to a different account.

• The phone number is registered with another carrier - If the number has already been ported over to another provider, you need to submit the name of that provider, and not the name of the provider where the number originally came from.

• The account is on hold, has been cancelled, or is pending cancellation - The account with your existing provider must be active in order for a port request to be approved by your carrier. They cannot authorize porting of a number on an account which is not active.

To ensure that there are no delays with the porting process, we may request that you submit a current copy of the bill from your current phone provider.

Additionally, a port may be refused due to the phone provider not having an interconnect agreement for porting. You should not have to worry about this with major carriers, but you may experience this problem with rural carriers.

If we run into any of these problems, we will let you know. Please ensure that you have given our Sales department an alternate contact phone number, in case we cannot reach you on the number on your account.

Canceling a port request

If you decide to either keep your phone number with your current provider, or that you do not want telephone service at all, you will need to cancel your port request with us before the day of your install or port date. We are unable to cancel on the day the port goes through, and you will need to submit a port request to a different carrier in order to move your phone number away from XMission Voice.

Porting away from XMission Voice

The process is essentially the same across all providers. Contact the sales/account department of the phone provider you wish to move your number over to, submit an LOA to that provider, and they will begin the same process. You can contact XMission Voice to verify that we have received a port-out request, and what the due date on that request is.