Your phone numbers are yours, not the phone company’s. All of your phone numbers – even if the numbers are ‘out-of-territory’ or secondary numbers.
On Friday, the CRTC maintained its consumer focus in a decision that reaffirmed that providers of VoIP services
continue to be required to port out telephone numbers, assigned from both inside and outside of their operating territory, to other VoIP service providers or to other telecommunications service providers, including local exchange carriers and wireless service providers.
The issue had been that some service providers thought that local number portability should apply just to primary phone numbers in a customer’s local area.
VoIP has enabled people to get phone numbers from all over the country and indeed, from all over the world, and have all of these numbers ring various devices that the customer directs.
Service providers are required to release phone numbers to customers that are leaving. The Commission does not require service providers to allow customers to bring numbers with them, but those service providers do so at their own peril. As the decision states:
In the Commission’s view, service providers who do not support or minimally support porting-in of telephone numbers will self limit their ability to attract new customers.
In effect, the CRTC’s decision confirms the customer in control, consistent with the intent of recent policy pronouncements.