Porting means moving an existing phone number from one provider to another. The number stays the same. Everything behind it changes.

Two things matter more than anything else in this process, and both of them are counter-intuitive.

You ask the new provider, not the old one. The company you are moving to submits the request and does the work. You do not call your current provider to arrange it, and you do not need their permission in the ordinary sense.

Do not cancel the old service first. This is the mistake that turns a routine transfer into a lost number. A port pulls the number out of a live account. If the account is already closed, there may be nothing left to pull. Cancel only after the number is confirmed working on the new service.

Everything else is paperwork and waiting. The paperwork is where ports fail, and they fail for a boring reason: the details you give the new provider have to match the details the old provider has on file, exactly, including the ones you have forgotten about.

Some of that paperwork is industry-wide and some of it is your provider's own. The ordering rules every Canadian provider works from — the Canadian Local Ordering Guidelines and the customer transfer process maps — are published through the CRTC's Business Process Working Group (CRTC), not by any one carrier. What the CRTC publishes for the person doing the switching is shorter and worth knowing now: you "do not need to provide 30 days notice before cancelling", and you should "not cancel your service before you switch to the new provider" (CRTC).

What you need before you start

Gather this before you fill in anything. Every item here is a place a port can stall.

A recent bill or account screen from the current provider. Not what you remember — what the account actually says.

The account holder's name, exactly as the old provider has it. If the line was set up under a business name, a former name, or a spouse's name, that is the name the port needs. A mismatch here is one of the most common reasons a request comes back rejected.

The service address on file. Again, as recorded, not as it is today.

The account number and any account PIN or transfer PIN. Some providers issue a separate PIN specifically for transfers.

Confirmation the number is not already in the middle of something else. A number that was recently transferred or recently changed can be blocked.

An unpaid balance is not, on its own, a permitted reason to block a wireless transfer. The CRTC recorded that the working group "did not find it appropriate to include any criteria for denying a customer-initiated porting request based on any outstanding monies owed to a customer's current service provider", and determined that wireless carriers "may only deny a customer-initiated porting request" where the number is not working due to a suspension or a termination (Telecom Decision CRTC 2006-28, ¶86 and ¶88).

You still owe the money — the bill follows you and the transfer does not clear it. But being behind on a bill is not, by itself, a reason your old provider can keep the number.

That determination is about wireless carriers. With a landline or an internet-based provider, check the exit terms in the contract you signed — which is a reason to read them while you are still deciding whether to sign.

Can any number be ported?

Not automatically. The general shape of the answer is that portability depends on what kind of number it is and where it lives — a mobile number, a landline and a number that only ever existed on an internet-based service are not equivalent, and geography can matter too.

There are two cases worth flagging for a practice line specifically.

A number from a free virtual-number service. Practitioners have described these being reclaimed for inactivity — one wrote that they wished incoming calls counted as "use", because the service discontinued their number. A number you did not pay for is not always a number you can move.

A number attached to a bundled service. If the number came free with something else — a directory listing, a practice-management subscription, an office suite — the terms on which you can take it away are worth reading before you build a practice on it.

The rule worth carrying around is that portability is not symmetrical. For internet-based services the CRTC determined that providers "will continue to be required to port out telephone numbers, assigned from both inside and outside their operating territory, to other VoIP service providers or to other telecommunications service providers", while all numbers "may be ported in at a VoIP service provider's discretion" (Telecom Decision CRTC 2008-11, ¶17 and ¶22).

The provider you are leaving has to let the number go. The provider you are joining can decline to take it. That asymmetry explains more failed transfers than anything else, and it is a question to put to the new provider before you commit rather than after. The same decision applies the rules to a number "whether they are primary or secondary numbers", and records that the regime "limits portability to within the exchange" — so geography can decide it too.

What actually happens, in order

1. Sign up with the new provider first. You usually need an active account there before a port can be requested. Most providers will give you a temporary number to work with in the meantime.

1. Submit the port request with the details above. The new provider handles it from there.

1. Watch for a rejection notice. Rejections are common, usually clerical, and usually fixable — a name mismatch, a wrong account number, a stale address. Fix and resubmit. A rejected port is not a failed port.

1. Wait. Nothing visible happens during this period, which is uncomfortable and normal.

1. The number cuts over. There is often a short window where behaviour is inconsistent — one practitioner who ported a number described receiving no text messages at all for two days afterwards and being, in her word, stressed. Test calls and texts, in both directions, before you assume it is done.

1. Only then, close the old account. Confirm the closure in writing, and check the next statement.

What to do while it is in flight

Assume the transition will be messier than the confirmation email suggests, and protect the two weeks around it.

Do not print anything. Do not update a directory listing to a number that has not moved yet. Do not announce anything to clients — from their side nothing is changing, so there is nothing to announce, and a premature message only creates confusion if the port slips.

Keep a way for people to reach you that does not depend on the port completing on schedule. An email address on your website is enough.

The honest caveat

No provider can guarantee a port, because no provider controls both ends of it. Any that promises one is describing its intentions, not its powers.

Practitioners have been burned here. One was told at signup that transferring the number away later would be simple, tried, and could not do it. Another cancelled a service that had not worked out and was left with a number already printed on business cards in circulation.

That is the real risk in this whole subject — not the waiting, but discovering at exit that leaving was harder than joining. It is worth asking about before you sign up, not when you are trying to leave.

The short version

Ask the new provider. Match the old provider's records exactly. Keep the old account open until the number is confirmed working on the new one, then close it in writing. Expect a rejection or two and do not read them as disaster. And test texts separately from calls — they do not always arrive together.

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