Telecom Thursday: What’s porting?
Porting is the ability you have to swap your phone number from one carrier to another. Carriers can be traditional telecoms or services like Listen and Google Voice.
Remember how you used to have to switch your number when you got a new carrier? Luckily the FCC intervened to make porting guaranteed for each user of a phone number.
So now, most people have had their phone number for many years. After a few years, notifying a change in number to every person, service, doctor’s office, two-factor app that currently has your original number would be a long, arduous task. This makes your phone number an extremely valuable possession to you.
To port, you tell the new provider, “Hey! I want you to own my number. Here’s my account info for my current provider.” That new provider goes to your old provider and tells them to fork over your number. Legally, your old provider must obey unless you’re still on contract with them (a phone payment plan like AT&T Next). Provided you’re settled up with the old provider, you should be enjoying your same number on your new provider fairly soon after (usually a few days).
Sometimes there’s a fee associated with porting out a number ($3 for Google Voice)–we don’t agree with that.
Traditionally, porting has been a manual and complicated process for all involved. Telephony API provider Twilio has (very) recently released a solution to make porting simpler for consumers. We’re releasing a site soon using that API to allow people to easily move their number from their carrier or Google Voice to Listen.
Now imagine a future where porting is very fast–if you combo that with our thoughts about virtual v SIM numbers…and you can switch phone number provider by just verifying your identity and saying, “OK.” We might soon live in a world where your phone number acts however you want it to act one minute and acts differently the next minute. Switching between feature sets for your phone number could be as simple as downloading a new app. Amazing, right?
Virtual phone numbers are catching up to SIM numbers at a fast pace and pretty soon the advantage will be to virtual numbers as more and more users separate their phone service (calls and SMS) from mobile data plans in order to take advantage of cheaper, more innovative services for phone numbers. And we have our ability as consumers to port our number to thank for this future.
