Travel Technology - Wireless porting to another carrier

For a multitude of reasons, I find the need to move from Verizon to T-mobile.

Is wireless number (LNP) porting as easy as it claims to be?

I go to T-Mobile, pick a phone, work out a service plan, and ask them to port my Verizon number.

What I hear is that my new T-mobile phone will be ringing in 3-4 hours on my old number. Verizon will then issue a final bill and send it to me.

Is it really this easy?

For a multitude of reasons, I find the need to move from Verizon to T-mobile.

Is wireless number (LNP) porting as easy as it claims to be?

I go to T-Mobile, pick a phone, work out a service plan, and ask them to port my Verizon number.

What I hear is that my new T-mobile phone will be ringing in 3-4 hours on my old number. Verizon will then issue a final bill and send it to me.

Is it really this easy?

Worked that well for me the last time I did it. I don't know about three hours, but quick. I'm doing it again today so we'll see how it works.

It'll either be done in an hour, or take 2 months. Thankfully T-mobile is pretty competent with their in-porting department, be grateful you are not moving to Sprint or ATT...

Porting IN to TMO has taken as short as 10 minutes.

And as long as 10 days when the MVNO (reseller of Cingular) couldn't figure out how to release the number. Finny how they got active after I mentioned the FCC fines....

Oh, TMO told me that Sprint was the worst for releasing numbers for porting out.

I would recommend the following steps:


Buy the phone
Activate under TMo with new phone number
Call and have a TMo customer service rep do the number switch for you

I did 4 numbers from Cingular last spring and within 1hr all were active on TMo

The most important thing is that you not call your existing carrier to cancel. If you do that you will lose your telephone number. Call the new carrier and have them do the port. As others have said, it's a fairly simple process.