By federal law, wireless carriers must allow consumers to port their phone number when switching to a different carrier.
That doesn’t mean they have to make it easy.
I recently ordered an iPhone 3GS. Since my previous phone was a BlackBerry on Verizon’s network, I had to switch from Verizon to AT&T in the process. I found that, although both the Apple and AT&T Web sites let me order the phone online, and both offered the chance to port my existing number, neither site would actually let me do it.
An AT&T spokesperson confirmed that this is normal and expected. It turns out that if you originally registered the number in a different state than you live in now–which I did–instead of ordering online, you need to process it over the phone with an AT&T sales representative. You do this via what amounts to a literal procession of various AT&T engineers and support personnel, who “hand off” the transition from one person to the next like a wireless baton. A very slow one.
In fact, the entire procedure took several days, including call backs, setting up a temporary AT&T phone number in my current area code, waiting for the iPhone to arrive, and about an hour of total hold time with four separate support personnel as they switched the old account to the new area and disabled the new temporary number. Some notes on getting through this with your sanity intact after the jump.
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