What does it mean to port phone numbers to Connect Customer?
Porting a phone number is the process of moving a phone number from one telephony service provider, or carrier, to another. Many businesses and organizations already have a phone number that is advertised to their customers, so changing this number would be disruptive.
If you port a phone number from your current carrier to Connect Customer, you can keep using the same phone number for your contact center. This helps to eliminate the need to update your business contact information.
Downtime and service disruption during the porting process
The porting process requires the losing carrier to remove your number from their systems, the winning carrier to add your number to their systems, and for number routing to be updated. Most porting activities complete within 15-30 minutes, with possible call disruptions. To ensure that they have engineers available to troubleshoot issues, most losing carriers complete porting actions only during normal business hours. Carriers typically communicate a two-hour porting window to resolve any issues that could arise.
For detailed information about available porting dates and times, see Region requirements for ordering and porting phone numbers in Connect Customer for your country or region.
What happens to a number after it is ported
As long as you continue to pay for the phone number, and do not release it from your Connect Customer instance, it stays assigned to your account, and you are billed accordingly.
To release a phone number, follow the steps in Release a phone number from Connect Customer back to inventory.
When a phone number is released from your Connect Customer instance:
You will no longer be charged for it.
You cannot reclaim the phone number.
Connect Customer reserves the right to allow it to be claimed by another customer.
If you move your contact center away from Connect Customer, and want to port your phone number away from Connect Customer, see Port phone numbers away from Connect Customer.
