You can keep your existing phone number when moving to the Cloud. Below we have provided a simple guide to ensure that you complete the number transfer successfully. We get asked by many business customers in Northern Ireland if they can keep their existing telephone number if you move your phone system to the Cloud? The simple answer is “Yes you can.”
For business owners, their business phone number is vital to the promotion and survival of their business. After all, this is the number where existing customers can contact you, and the number where potential new customers will also make that initial call to.
Any business who has an on-premise phone system, will have their main line(s) terminating on that phone system. When you make the move to a Cloud based phone system, we simply port your existing number to the Cloud at the same time.
Local Number Porting
Moving your phone number to the cloud, is generally known in the world of Telecoms as a number port. There are two slightly different types of number port.
The technical term for moving a fixed line number to the cloud is known as “Local number Porting.”
It is a slightly different process to porting your mobile phone number, which is called “Full mobile number porting,” which relates to the process of changing your mobile number to a different service provider, or moving the number to a different location entirely.
For fixed line local number porting, (PSTN and ISDN) this is a well-defined and established process that has been working extremely well for a very long period of time. There are two scenarios to consider:
- Existing B4B Customer – we already manage your existing phone number, so we simply perform an internal port to the Cloud, once we have your new Cloud Phone System installed, tested and working
- New B4B Customer – If you are a new customer, we will install, test and ensure your new Cloud system is working, and then we will do a number port from your old network provider to the B4B Cloud platform
Both of the processes above are standard Telecom practices, and they work without any interruption to your business. This is a process that is handled very quickly and with no disruption to service.
Number Porting vs Call Forwarding
Porting is a permanent means of moving a phone number to another provider. Call forwarding is where the number keeps its old account association, but it is forwarding to another number or person instead.
Porting to the Cloud
More and more businesses are now making the move to a Cloud or Hosted phone system. The reasons they are making the change is that a Cloud Phone system is the future, as it offers high performance, efficiency and is the most cost-effective option.
This newer phone system will allow your business to improve the way your organisation communicates and change the way you do business for the better.
For any advice on “Number Porting” and how to retain your existing phone number, please contact us on 02890- 748844. Alternatively, you can read our Cloud telephone systems page for more information and read all our FAQ about Cloud Phone systems for business.
