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Phone Number Porting Process

Chris
Updated

Purpose: 

The purpose of this article is to provide information to Outreach Users regarding porting phone numbers into Outreach. 

Intended Audience: 

  • Outreach Users
  • Outreach Admins

Phone Number Porting Process: 

Porting is the process of transferring a customer’s phone numbers from one phone company (the losing carrier) to a new phone company (the winning carrier). Outreach supports porting for US phone numbers where customers can provide the documentation required by the losing carrier to authorize a move. Outreach does not support porting international, including Canadian, numbers, only those from the United States and its territories. Outreach does not charge a port-in fee for moving phone numbers.

Porting US telephone numbers is a multi step process that can take 2 - 6 weeks to complete. The process requires coordination between the losing and winning carrier. Outreach will facilitate coordination between these carriers to complete a port, but is not able to expedite the process or define a specific move date. Please note porting of toll free numbers (e.g. 1-800) for use in Outreach is not supported. 

The porting process has strict requirements that, if not met, results in requests being rejected by the losing carrier. If a port request is rejected it will need to be corrected and resubmitted, which restarts the timeline to move the phone numbers. To be eligible for porting phone numbers need to be in use. Do not cancel service with your current provider until a port is complete.

Submitting a Port Request

To begin a number port you will need to follow the Porting a Phone Number to Twilio process with a Letter of Authorization (LOA) containing:

  1. The authorized account owner’s first name and last name.
  2. The corresponding service address. This must be a physical address as PO Boxes are not accepted.
    • You may have to submit multiple, separate requests for porting if your phone numbers exist on multiple accounts or have different authorized owners/addresses.
  3. The list of phone numbers you want to port.
    • If there is a PIN set up on the account associated with numbers you will need to provide it to Outreach along with the LOA to authorize the request.
  4. Signature of the authorized user and/or owner of the numbers.

IMPORTANT: The information in your LOA must exactly match the authorized user name and service address on the losing carrier’s Customer Service Record (CSR) for the numbers you are trying to port. Contacting your current provider to obtain the CSR before submitting a port request is highly recommended to ensure a streamlined process. You may need to ask for your provider’s Porting Team to obtain a CSR. Please specify that you want the customer service record on file with the carrier, not merely your billing records.

In addition to the LOA you will need to provide a scanned, or electronic, copy of a phone bill from within the last 30 days, that includes the account, owner/authorized user name, and address information for all the numbers you'd like to port. If your provider does not provide you with a bill, please provide a receipt of phone number purchase and/or a screenshot of your account portal with the phone numbers included. 

Once you have all of these pieces of information they should be provided to Outreach for review and submission to our voice provider. This take up to one business day to complete. 

Timeline after Submitting a Port Request to Outreach: 

  1. The porting request is submitted by our voice provider to the winning carrier. This takes up to one business day. Your request is then submitted by the winning carrier to your current carrier.
  2. The winning carrier responds to the losing carrier. This can take one week to complete. Outreach will receive the response from the losing carrier via our voice provider. At this point, your request will be either approved or rejected:
    • Approved: If approved, you will receive a porting date when your number will be ported.
    • Rejected: See below for the most common reasons for rejection and how to resolve them.
  3. Outreach will contact you with your upcoming porting date as determined by the losing carrier. Outreach is not able to request a specific date for when the port may take place.
    • Once the port completes, Outreach will import the number from our voice provider into your Outreach account. There can be up to 24 hours of downtime as Outreach coordinates with multiple parties to make the numbers available in Outreach.

Reasons for Rejection: 

There are several common reasons why a port request may be rejected by the carrier losing the numbers. These rejections need to be remedied by the account owner for the phone number for the port request to be resubmitted and able to proceed.

  1. LOA Information does not match the name/address on file with the carrier in their CSR. To resolve, this request a copy of the CSR from your current carrier.
  2. Unauthorized Signature. The person authorized to make changes on the account is not the person who signed the LOA. To resolve this rejection, contact the carrier to update the person authorized to make changes on the account.
  3. Incorrect / Missing Account Number. To resolve this rejection, contact your losing carrier to obtain the account number they have on file.
  4. Number is Inactive. Your numbers must be in service with the losing carrier. To resolve this rejection, contact the losing carrier to reinstate the number.
  5. Unpaid balance or the carrier charges a port away fee. To resolve this rejection you must pay any outstanding balance/fee to your current carrier.
  6. Wrong Account Pin. In order to port some numbers, you must submit a PIN. Please note that the PIN is sometimes the last four digits of the account holder’s Social Security Number. To resolve this rejection, contact the carrier to obtain the PIN number they have on file.
  7. Locked Google Voice Number. All Google Voice numbers must be unlocked before they can be ported out. To unlock the number visit this link: www.google.com/voice/unlock Once you have unlocked your number Outreach can resubmit the port request.
  8. Invalid Billing Telephone Number. The billing telephone number is typically a master number used to identify an account with many phone numbers. To resolve this rejection, contact the losing carrier to obtain the billing telephone number they have on file.
  9. Number is Unportable. In some cases carriers may refuse to port numbers that are a subset of a larger block of numbers owned by the customer or are in restricted regional locations. To resolve this please contact your current service provider and request detailed directions on how to port the number away.
  10. Resold Account. To resolve this rejection, please contact your service provider and request a CSR (Customer Service Record) or provide detailed directions on how to port the number away.

Porting phone numbers away from Outreach

Porting to another Twilio based service

Outreach uses Twilio as our voice service provider. If you want to move numbers from Outreach to another service where Twilio is the provider, your new service provider must include the name of active Outreach Admin to Twilio and request that Twilio share this information with Outreach.

Porting to a non Twilio based service

Porting is initiated by your new service provider. Once you have started the process with your new provider, please contact our support team to let us know you are porting your numbers out so that we can help to make sure process completes smoothly.

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