keeping my own number when switching to talk talk

sloan1967

I have been trying to help my elderly father out by advising him to change from his current landline and broadband supplier, virgin media to talk talk. our reasons for the change are that virgin media are putting my fathers monthly cost up from £18 to £20 changing speeds from upto 2MB to up to 10. A friend of ours pointed us to a great little website, callled sam knows which measures the average speeds from local exchanges, my fathers is 1.56 MB.
So in my plan to save my father some money the same friend reconmended that my father switches to talk talks essentails plan. On paper this is great he now pays under £18 per month for phone and broadband.
My only 2 complaints are that it clearly states on the talk talk website that its is an 18 month contract however when the sales dept called my father this afternoon they have said they are signing him up for 24 month... But even more annoying noone can tell us if my father can keep his current number, the same one he has had fir the last 22 years with BT and virgin media. Virgin have informed me that my father can take his number with him but noone at talk talk seems to know if they will let him keep it.
Please can someone help me out with this? its such a good offer and i would hate to have to tell my father to cancel it just because he could not keep the number

WhoKilledBambi?

If the number was ever with Virgin cable then you will need a new number. I assume this is where the 24 months contract comes in since that's what you must have when you get a line installed via talktalk.
This is purely a talktalk thing, they don't/won't have an agreement with virgin for number portability.

utilitybroker

You cant port a number see www.talktalk.co.uk/newlines

WhoKilledBambi?

utilitybroker wrote: »

You cant port a number see www.talktalk.co.uk/newlines

Not an ex-cable number - http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=208055&postcount=17

utilitybroker

WhoKilledBambi? wrote: »

Not an ex-cable number - http://www.talktalkmembers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=208055&postcount=17

According to www.talktalk.co.uk/newlines you cant port a number from any provider.

"The new service will operate on a new telephone number, existing or previous numbers cannot be migrated from any old provider."

WhoKilledBambi?

Sorry, missed the t in "cant" : point I was making badly is under normal circumstances where you are just changing providers you can port BT numbers to TT but not ex-cable numbers. Right enough, for new lines installed via TT you can't port any number as you say.