Impossible to keep old landline phone number - different exchange

Arthurian

I'm moving house just a few hundred yards away, and tried to contact a few broadband and phone providers to move from Fibre To The Cabinet, with broadband and a landline, to my new house which is Fibre To The Property.  Apparently I can plug my phone into my router at the new house, and buy adapters for other phones dotted around the new house, to be able to use Voice over The Internet Protocol. However, BT advise that I cannot keep my old phone number because I will be moving to a different exchange.  It's less than 5 minutes' walk away, but they say you cannot move a phone number from one exchange to another, all phone numbers must be kept within the same exchange.  It's frustrating! I suppose going with a stand-alone company for phone calls over VOIP like Vonage residential would hit the same problem? Does anyone here know a way around this?

Mark_d

I've never heard of this issue,  But to be fair I haven't used a landline in about 20 years.  I just use my Lebara mobile for all calls

iniltous

There is still a value in keeping numbers geographically linked , and every exchange has a boundary somewhere ( I know of a street where the boundary divides a street , so something like No.12 is  a different exchange to No.14 ( where evens on one side , odds on the other ) so if you are moving a short distance but do cross an exchange boundary it’s reasonable to not allow you to take the number, this isn't a technical limitation, but a historical one ,  back when exchanges were electromechanical and electronic ,it wasn’t possible to have a number outside the boundary, and although digital and now IP telephony doesn’t have the restrictions of older exchanges, the industry in general still observes exchange boundary’s to keep the historical connection between numbers and areas .

Ordinary VoIP providers are not constrained by this linked number scheme , if , for example , you wanted a Glasgow number and use it in Penzance, it’s not an issue , so if your number is  so important that you need to retain it , port the number to a traditional VoIP provider, bearing in mind the possibility that it will cease the associated broadband when its ported , then you can  answer calls to that number anywhere you like .

Arthurian

Thanks very much, Iniltous, I'm glad to hear it is possible.

Fife_Flyer

I had a similar experience recently when I moved home, except in my case I moved to a different apartment in the same building less than 30 feet away from my old one and was told my new property comes under a different exchange! I thought this was very strange but the advisor from BT was adamant that I couldn't keep my existing phone number. Not a huge issue to me because I wasn't intending to keep the landline anyway...

iniltous

It’s extremely unlikely that two apartments in the same building will be served from different exchanges , I suspect the advisor was talking b*llocks 

DullGreyGuy

Arthurian said:
I suppose going with a stand-alone company for phone calls over VOIP like Vonage residential would hit the same problem? Does anyone here know a way around this?

It shouldn't, we've moved numbers to Voipfone (https://www.voipfone.co.uk/services/porting), they are more business orientated but we've used them at home for donkeys years. If they can do it there is no reason why other VOIP operators couldn't