How do I Port a Number over?

If you are a Business customer (i.e. have a FAN) - you should get auto-routed to them.

i'm a little confused about the how porting process.
so i have a nextel, my contract is over and i should be getting my iphone soon. so i activate it wil itunes and use my number to have it port. but...what happens to my old phone? does it just stop working and will i stop getting bills in the mail for it?

thanks

Ok, i have a metro pcs phone, and i want to keep my same number.... can i do that?

Yes you can. When you are setting up your phone in iTunes, you can port your old # over.

Hi All,

Its worth noting that, when porting a number from one carrier to another, it can take some time for the switch to propagate through the various networks (sort of like transferring a web domain name from one host to another). I'm not an iPhone user (yet!), but when I switched from Sprint to AT&T, I had to carry both phones for a day or two, because for a brief period both carriers were fielding calls to the same number.

So if you find your new iPhone is losing some of your calls at first, try turning on your old phone to see if they got picked up there.

foxxylove1313,

The number will get moved over to the iPhone, but you may want to call Nextel after a few days to make sure they are closing out the account.

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

jmbehrens,

You should probably keep the old phone off as much as possible. Some networks may delay releasing the number if they see the old phone as being "in use" on their network.

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

Call me a cynic, but I would recommend always calling your old carrier to confirm that your service has been cancelled. I would not rely on porting your number over to AT&T and just hoping that your old carrier will stop billing you.

For me, it was sooooo worth paying the contract cancellation fee to finally break free from Sprint, which has been a constant headache for years. And to my surprise, when I mentioned at the AT&T store that I had to pay a cancellation fee, they told me they would put a $200 credit on my first bill to cover it (and they did!). In one visit, AT&T provided me with better customer service than Sprint EVER did over the course of about 10 years, LOL. I hope it keeps up! 🙂

-SB

Can't reply to your email because it isn't listed. You would not be able to use your Argentinean sim card in the iphone. The iphone only supports AT&T if you buy it in the US. Your only option would be to buy an unlocked iPhone from France which are quite expensive. If you activated it with AT&T you would be able to roam for two months in Argentina before they would cut your service. This would be a very expensive option.

I just purchased an iphone, with the ATT Family Plan, two lines. I would like to port two numbers which are currently using ATT's Callvantage (VOIP). These were land lines before I ported them to Callvantage.

The person I spoke to in the ATT store told me that he checked the portability of these numbers, and they were portable. But then he asked me for "an account number." I don't seem to have an account number. I called Callvantage, and the person I spoke to told me that the only way to get my numbers back would be to port them to a landline first, and then from the landline to the cell phone. He also seemed to think that because I have two telephone numbers on a single VOIP account, that porting might be impossible.

The two numbers were originally assigned by landline telephone companies. The numbers are:

707.585.xxxx and
707.636.xxxx

Can anyone give advice? If I do have to port first to a landline, what's the cheapest way to do that? If I can't get the numbers back at all, what's the cheapest way to just have them forwarded to my cell phones?

Robin Mathias,

Call AT&T Wireless' Customer Service and ask to speak to the Porting Department. They will be the most familiar with how to go about porting the numbers over, and if it is possible. I have worked with them before on issues that others said were impossible to port over.

Hope this helps,

Nathan C.

The ATT Porting Department's number is 888 898 7685. They are open on Saturday's until 9PM

As an FYI to anyone using Sprint. I simply activated my iPhone following the porting instructions in iTunes and my account was FULLY switched over to my iPhone in about 15 minutes. Wow.
I did not give Sprint a heads up beforehand and it was seamless.

If you want to keep your Argentina number, you'll need to buy an unlocked iPhone. There are various locations in the US that have them including www.importgsm.com (I've purchased phones from them before but not an iPhone, though they have them). If you know anyone in France, they sell unlocked iPhones legally there.

Your US iPhone with an ATT number will work in Argentina (used mine there last month), but will incur long distance charges, so if you're going to be in Argentina a while it's probably worth getting an unlocked phone.

This might be a stupid question because i dont have a phone but if you have a sim card already do you have to port your number im asking this because my dad is intrested in getting the iphone.