Number porting FAQs

When porting your services from one carrier to another or changing technology, number porting will be required. Eg if your ISDN is being decommissioned and yournporting those ISDN Numbers to SIP, Hosted PBX or MS Teams Direct Routing CommsChoice will need to arrange number porting. The following answers the main questions we get around number porting.

Q. Will there be down time?

Yes, during cutover, where your number is moving from your losing carrier to CommsChoice, your number will be disconnected/unreachable.

CAT A Ports, downtime is up to 30 minutes (not guaranteed). On very rare occasions can take up to 1-4 hours which is industry standard SLA.

CAT C Ports, downtime is a minimum of 1 hour (not guaranteed). On vary rare occasions can take up to 4 hours which is industry standard SLA.

Q. How long is the Porting process?

There are many factors that can affect the time it takes to port numbers such as a donor carrier and the complexity of the port. Generally, the typical timeframe is below:

CAT A Ports: 5-10 business days

CAT C Ports: 4-8 weeks

1300/1800 Ports: 5-10 business days

Q. Will my ISDN or PSTN phone lines be disrupted when my number ports to Teams, SIP or Cloud Business Phone?

ISDN & PSTN lines will typically experience downtime of 1-2hrs while numbers are porting to Teams, SIP or Cloud Business Phone.

Q. Will my ADSL be disrupted when my number ports?

If you want to continue using your ADSL service, you will need to plan with your current provider to ensure your ADSL is not disrupted. This may involve moving your ADSL to a phone number that is not porting away.

Q. Which providers can CommsChoice Port from?

CommsChoice can port numbers from most Australian carriers and VoIP/SIP providers such as Telstra, Optus, MyNetFone and Commander.

Q. What can cause delays?

Providing incorrect details, or details that don’t match the losing carriers account records will cause a port to be rejected which can cause significant delays.

For CAT A ports when you have complex services on the line (rotary, line hunt, fax, etc) will cause the port to be rejected. Such services will need to be disassociated before porting.

Number porting agreements between different carriers have different turn around times. Certain carriers can take longer than expected to respond to porting requests.

For more detailed information, please download our Number Porting Guide.