Please take note of VIA's Porting advisory.
Every effort is made to ensure your number port(s) is as smooth as possible. Due to the nature of the previously monopolised telecoms market in the UK, we are completely at the mercy of at least 2 third-party organisations and sub-departments in these organisations.
When a port is submitted, we submit a request to port to the Losing Communications Provider (LCP, your current communications provider). We submit the request with a port date greater than 2 weeks but within 6 weeks. If the port is a Standard Port (SP), the losing communications provider has 72 hours to respond. They can either accept or reject the port. The common rejections are:
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Address Incorrect - This is the most common issue, providing the same address on the bill from the LCP will speed the porting process. This usually happens when an Office move occurs but the LCP is not informed of the address change. Please ensure the LCP has the correct, current address.
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Invalid DDI's or DDI ranges - This is the second most common rejection. Normally occurs when a customer is assigned a number range they did not know they own and the LCP still has this on record. Please ensure you submit all associated DDI's & DDI ranges when applying for the port.
Any of the above rejections then reset the porting clock with the LCP. We then have 48 hours to respond with the correct information. Please provide any requested information in a timely and efficient manner.
The above process may occur may times depending on the rejection reasons. At any time, the LCP can cancel the port (instead of rejecting it) if they feel too much information is incorrect. This completely resets the clock and the timescales start again.
Once the port is accepted, we will be given a port date within the next 4 weeks.
On the Porting day
On the day of the port, our porting team will contact you to remind you the port is occurring today. They will then contact the LCP to request the port to go ahead. The port will proceed at any point during the day. Depending on how many carriers there are between the LCP and VIA's network will depend on the length of downtime. From our experience 95% of ports complete with no downtime. However, DOWNTIME CAN SOMETIMES OCCUR. The most we have ever seen is 4 hours, however this is an extremely rare scenario.
Day of Port Issues
Whilst most ports complete with no problems at all, some ports, about 5%, occur run into issues on the day of the port. Commonly due to the LCP running out of time on the day of the port or the port being accepted in error. These circumstances are extremely rare however they do happen and are completely out of VIA's control. VIA accepts no responsibility whatsoever for any loss of inbound call service due to failed port. We will do everything in our power to ensure the numbers are back up and running again ASAP.