Number Porting & MVNO's

[MRKV]

I'm looking to switch from AT&T to Straight Talk but I have no experience with porting a number from one provider to another. The process seems easy enough however what they don't really give you is a definite time on how long the process takes. I use this number for work also so it's important to me that I keep it with as little downtime as possible. My question is really two fold. 1.) For those of you that have done this before, roughly how long did it take for your number to work on the new provider and 2.) Is there any "blackout" period you experienced during it? I'm concerned with missing work related calls/texts.

Thanks

 

[Gawain]

I'm looking to switch from AT&T to Straight Talk but I have no experience with porting a number from one provider to another. The process seems easy enough however what they don't really give you is a definite time on how long the process takes. I use this number for work also so it's important to me that I keep it with as little downtime as possible. My question is really two fold. 1.) For those of you that have done this before, roughly how long did it take for your number to work on the new provider and 2.) Is there any "blackout" period you experienced during it? I'm concerned with missing work related calls/texts.

Thanks

Mobile-to-mobile number porting usually takes only a few minutes, but the standard allows up to three hours I think. Personally, I've never seen it take longer than 10 minutes, but that was on number ports with "real" carriers, not MVNOs. That said, I'm not a fan of any of the MVNOs. When something goes wrong, it takes twice as long to fix something. Also make sure your phone is unlocked.

 

[micallan_17]

I used to work as a customer service rep for Straight Talk and the port process usually only took a few hours but that was when your current carrier releases that number quickly, some other times it took more than a day and sometimes customers you to call saying the can make calls on there phones but cant receive them and vice versa, there were other cases where customers still received calls on there current network phone but can't make them while on there straight talk they were able to make calls but not receive them; something like it was half activated on one phone and half deactivated with on the other phone. This is a risk you will have to take if you want your number ported to straight talk. some it can be simple and fast but sometimes it can be delayed and frustrating.

 

[MRKV]

Thanks for the replies. That was the one thing I was worried about, having a half/half scenario where one phone where I can receive calls/texts but not make them. Guess I'll just have to pull the trigger and see how it goes. Might wait until the weekend though.