PORT your home phone number to a cell phone to keep it.



If you're like me, your home phone number is on all those resumes that you've been flooding the world with. Even though they didn't do me much good, I still don't want to loose my home phone number. It turns out most land lines can be transfered over to cell phones so you can take it with you.


Even though ANY cell phone company can do this, here's what I got from calling some of them:

SPRINT - No clue... clerk finally said they could do it, but couldn't answer how long it will take or anything really except that she kept trying to push me through making an order for a phone and services. This was even though I said repeatedly that I couldn't order service until I know what was involved. I also didn't see anything about it on their front page.

VERIZON - (the "can you hear me now?" people) has it right on the home page "Keep Your Number" and the woman on the phone told me that it would take at least a week and seemed like it was no problem to do (so, I'm guessing she was on the home page too :-) They also have a try Verizon for 30 days thing.. but I think technically all phone companies are supposed to allow you to return phones.

ALLTEL - (the blond guy people)... someone told me they can do it, haven't found it on the site and haven't called.

But, HERE IS THE KEY... you have to do it WHILE YOUR HOME PHONE IS ACTIVE. So you can't just tell them the number, the number has to be still assigned to you and (likely) paid up current. If you have land service like mine that goes out everytime it rains...

Yes, everytime it rains, there is static on my side and anyone calling in gets
either busy signal or line being checked message. I've been through the
state UCC complaint system twice and still it isn't fixed. But at least my
friend in California can tell the weather here in Ohio just by calling me.

... then giving up your land line and going to a plan with minutes on it won't be as bad. Now, depending on how much your land line is costing you, it might not be bad at all. Most companies have a "unlimited" package for $99.99... since cell phone plans make my head spin, you'll just have to go check them out yourself.

So, the practical advice is that if you want to keep your number, don't let it go too long or try to do it the day before you move. It might not happen. Once I've waded through all the plans, etc, I'll post how the experience was... I had been keeping the land line because it allowed me to work from home for these call centers, but I'm guessing that's not going to work much longer now.

Obviously, still no official word from the mortgage company. Hopefully they were headquarters in TX and the hurricane wiped out their entire business building and/or MANY, MANY homes that they have mortgaged (obviously I would want the owners to be safe!)