Introduction to Porting

Number portability enables end-users with a Publicly Available Telephone Service (PATS) to retain their telephone numbers when they change their Communications Provider (CP).

Geographic Number Portability (GNP) allows a customer of one Communications Provider (the Losing Communications Provider (LCP)) to become a customer of another Communications Provider (the Gaining Communications Provider (GCP)) whilst retaining the same geographic telephone number. This requires the Range Holder (RH) to route calls to the GCP for them to deliver calls to the end-user. A ported number never actually leaves the RH - if a number is in someone's range, it will always be in their range - but the RH will forward calls to the GCP. 

For porting to take place, there must be a commercial agreement in place between the GCP and the RH and the technical interconnect to enable calls to be routed. For a list of the companies we're able to port numbers from, please see our list of current porting agreements. Please note these agreements refer only to geographic numbers, for non-geographic number porting please see our process guide here.

In all instances, only the number will be ported, not the service - the LCP will cease the access line and remove all associated services (for example, Broadband) at the time of port. It is the customer’s obligation to ensure that the LCP does not continue billing for the service. The GCP will provide the customer with the agreed services when the number is ported to their network. The number must be in use and working to be portable, if service has been suspended for any reason (for example, bad debt) then we'll be unable to port it.

As we hold the porting agreements and technical interconnects Simwood will be regarded as the GCP in the context of porting numbers to us. The wholesale Simwood customer requesting the port would, however, be the end user’s CP and therefore would be the GCP from the customer’s perspective.

It is important to note that Number Portability does not enable CPs to switch Wholesale Providers, the process is solely for the benefit of the end-user. Wholesale migrations are not permitted and will always be rejected.