Moving premises but keeping telephone number

grooster

Hi, I wonder if anybody can shed any light on this for me.
I run a small business with 2 bt lines from a residential premises. We are it the process of moving home along with my business, literally 2 minutes up the road. I have just found out today that the lines go to a different exchange from what I'm going to.
Can the lines in this day and age be moved?
If not what are my options and prices.
I need the phone number, we've had it for the last 20 years.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Nick

paddyrg

I'd call your telecoms provider, they'll answer for certain, however for a business line they'll likely be rather understanding and help where they can. They can probably arrange call forwarding if you do need to change number, but they may well be able to transfer it.

nick-nick

Have you looked at porting it to VOIP?

If the number is vital to you then you can get it ported to a VOIP number and then have an internet phone. It will provide additional benefits like call costs, working from anywhere but keeping the number, no messing about with moving your number around with you and you can even take the calls on your mobile if you wanted to.

You could then just get any random number for your broadband and plug your VOIP phone in.

I have used these in the past : http://www.voipfone.co.uk/PB_Porting_Numbers.php

Looks like it is £20 but might be worth checking with them if they can do this with your number.

grooster

Many thanks for help on this. I will give them a call in the morning. I've never heard of VoIP calling but I'm going to have a quick look into it now.
Cheers

nick-nick

You will be amazed.

You can get just a normal phone that goes onto your desk but it plugs into your internet rather than your actual phone socket. It rings as normal and you make calls as normal. You will pay bills to whoever you use for your VOIP service rather than BT but the good thing is that if you are going away for example, you just unplug the phone from your desk in the office and then plug it in whereever you are (or on your mobile).

The number is basically in the internet so you can access it from anywhere.

pooch

grooster wrote: »

Hi, I wonder if anybody can shed any light on this for me.
I run a small business with 2 bt lines from a residential premises. We are it the process of moving home along with my business, literally 2 minutes up the road. I have just found out today that the lines go to a different exchange from what I'm going to.
Can the lines in this day and age be moved?
If not what are my options and prices.
I need the phone number, we've had it for the last 20 years.

Any insight would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Nick

Ypu'd probably have gotten a better response to your question relating to your BT (residential) Telephone Services if you had asked on the Phones and TV board, rather than this Small Biz and Charities' Moneysaving board.

Anyway, a quick google came up with this link
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/8320/~/can-i-take-my-existing-phone-number-with-me-when-i-move-house%3F

From that response, I would suggest if you are not in the same exchange area, forget about BT helping you.

InsideInsurance

If they are both residential lines then there is a slim chance that BT will help. They are probably more helpful if they are officially business lines.

As has been suggested, VoIP may be a good option, you can port your numbers to your VoIP provider - I use Voipfone - and all calls come via the internet so you are globally mobile whilst retaining your old local number, similarly they can register other numbers for you if you want to appear "local" anywhere else in the UK or in a number of other countries

You can get a fairly wide range of physical handsets so to the lay person the fact it goes via VoIP is totally invisible. If you particularly like your current handset you can get a converter to make it a VoIP phone

Why do you have two lines? Most VOIP setups can handle multiple simultaneous calls so you may not need two numbers going forward and all handsets can handle all numbers, if you want, so avoiding other pains

grooster

I did take a quick look before posting at the forum that was mentioned but there was only a mobile phones section.
To answer your question, we have 2 lines, one for business and one for personal, they are both business lines and my business pays for both.
I only need to port the main business number, i've had it 25 years and need to keep it.
Theres another twist today. Weve been told that our new build property will not be ready until late January. The buyers of our property want to be in by Xmas and we dont want to lose the sale. This makes the phones even more complicated. I will have to temporarily get a redirect for both lines to our mobiles for a month. Then get 2 lines installed at the new house, then get another redirect when we move in to these new numbers. Nightmare.

I will have to take a good look at voip, just a little unsure about it, a step into the unknown.

Thanks for your replies and help.

Owain_Moneysaver

Port your number to VoIP. You then have a choice of
- forward calls to mobile in the VoIP control panel. This will probably be MUCH cheaper than forwarding calls through BT, and much more controllable.
- have a softphone app (VoIP software) on a smartphone. This may cost you a bit in mobile data costs
- letting the VoIP provider answer calls with its voicemail system and you can call people back when convenient. Most VoIP providers can email your voicemails to you.

grooster

Voip sounds a really good idea but there will be a problem to start with, I'm not going to start messing getting broadband installed for just a month in the temporary accommodation. So I don't know how I can get this to work until I get into the new house and get it installed.
Will this work straight away for me on my mobile on a redirect or do I need a broadband connection first.

nick-nick

grooster wrote: »

Voip sounds a really good idea but there will be a problem to start with, I'm not going to start messing getting broadband installed for just a month in the temporary accommodation. So I don't know how I can get this to work until I get into the new house and get it installed.
Will this work straight away for me on my mobile on a redirect or do I need a broadband connection first.

How good is the mobile signal there? How many calls do you expect per day? If there aren't many you could easily run it off 4G.

Any wifi you could use around there?