Porting landline number away from Virgin to a VoIP provider

[Anonymous]

Hi

Can anybody confirm the process to port a landline number away from Virgin to a third-party VoIP provider (in this case sipgate)? If it makes any difference, the number was originally a BT landline number that was ported to Virgin (NTL at the time) about 15 years ago and ideally we'd not lose it.

I'm planning to cease my Virgin services (TV/broadband/landline) and want to be sure I do things in the correct order and don't trigger anything that will cause problems to any other part of the process.

Thanks in advance

Matt

[Zach_R]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for your post and welcome back to our community forums. We're here to help.

I'm so sorry to hear that you're looking to cancel and leave us. May I ask why? We may be able to help you out. Regarding transferring a landline number, you would need to speak to your new provider about this. They would then submit a request to us to transfer it over.

Thanks,
 

[Anonymous]

Yes, I know that the VoIP provider will need to trigger the port process. I'm more worried that if I give you a "cease" notice in advance of the port request that that will prevent the port happening as there will be outstanding work on the account (as something I read on your site somewhere indicated).

As to why we're going to leave? Put simply - value.

We've long questioned how much value (especially after the incessant creep up of the cost every year) we get out of the services we subscribe to and for me personally, the artificially low upstream bandwidth on internet connections that you allow. Crazily, it's easier for my wife and I to work from our holiday home in France (when the French Government haven't shut us out anyway) where the cost of a 1Gbps connection with 400Mbps upstream is only €25 and fully symmetrical for not much more.

Until the middle of last year the only viable internet connection for us was via Virgin but Openreach finally got around to upgrading our estate to FTTP, despite it being available in the rest of the town for years so we've now got more options internet wise.

Landline phone service we couldn't really care less about but we can have an effectively free VoIP phone connection with sipgate with probably less than £1 per year in outgoing call costs at 1ppm for the amount of calls we make.

Your TV service I haven't used for 7 or 8 years since one of your engineers took our second TV box away saying "you're not allowed to do that" despite our package at the time being for two set top boxes. My wife uses the Tivo box but only really records/chase plays Freeview channels and I've already got PC tuner cards and HDHomeruns that can time shift as much TV as we can possibly handle and stream it to the TV's/laptops/phones/tablets in and out of the house.

Who knows, maybe we'll be back in a year or two's time and we can benefit from the new customer deals that you refuse to offer to existing subscribers...

[Paulina_Z]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for coming back to us in regards to your landline porting query.

I'm sorry to hear that this is the reason that you're considering leaving your services at the moment. Changing prices is never an easy decision, but as service usage has increased over the last 24 months we have to continuously re-invest in our network. Doing so permits more people to enjoy our services and meet the demand to continuously deliver the fastest widely-available speeds in the UK. We're continuing to invest in our network which will help improve performance and reliability for all.

At the same time, we have supported our customers with a range of upgrades and new services at no extra cost through speed boosts, upgrading Hubs and set-top boxes, and always looking to provide new content, we're committed to giving customers access to the best content and worry-free connectivity.

If you start the disconnection process with us, we still require a 30 day cancellation period to happen, whether you're in or out of contract. During this time, you can contact your new provider to trigger the porting process. This way our staff will be aware that you'll be leaving soon and will not reject any porting requests. 

Ideally we would love to keep you on as customers, but we understand that you have to do what's best for you. You can contact us on 150/ 03454541111 - option 1, option 4, and option 4 again to discuss this further with our team.

Please let us know what we can do to help in the meantime and if there's anything else we can support you through.

Keep in touch if you can. Thank you.

[moof]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Put simply - value.

We've long questioned how much value (especially after the incessant creep up of the cost every year) we get out of the services we subscribe to and for me personally, the artificially low upstream bandwidth on internet connections that you allow. Crazily, it's easier for my wife and I to work from our holiday home in France (when the French Government haven't shut us out anyway) where the cost of a 1Gbps connection with 400Mbps upstream is only €25 and fully symmetrical for not much more.

Until the middle of last year the only viable internet connection for us was via Virgin but Openreach finally got around to upgrading our estate to FTTP, despite it being available in the rest of the town for years so we've now got more options internet wise.

MatthewVX any update to your planned move away back in Jan 2022? 

was it successful? rue the day you started? gave up and are still paying for VM?

like you I've always questioned the value of the VM services I'm forced to have in order to get the fastest broadband available to my area.   Now in a time of having to question every penny, I began looking for service providers who could give me just a fast internet and nothing more (knowing that countries like USA or now FRANCE get 1GB for approx 25 per month). Nothing in my area.... well until today!

I already have a reliable VoIP service I use and like for work, manage my own router, and really could do without 250 channels of rubbish I don't watch nor wanted. The home phone is replaceable, but would like to maintain the number for ease of migration.

Today I had an enlightening conversation with an Openreach engineer in my street, who explained he was doing what I had suspected and running FTTP via the existing pole and support wire network BT have in place in most older streets.  Says it'll be online end of month and then available to the various service providers.   

Okay he had me at the two word horrorshow Talk Talk, but I would consider a shift to BT or similar, IF I could get just what I want

a 500Mbps provider without telly and fluff

[jem101]

@moof  Ah, Claris the dogcow, and anyone who knows the history of Apple Mac operating systems will understand the reference.

OK let’s be honest here, don’t compare internet provisions between countries, yes I’m sure there are place is the US and France that can get symmetric gigabit connections, so could I, here in the UK if I could be bothered. Trust me I know, through work, quite a few Americans and they would kill to have the breadth of choice and provision for Internet services which we have in the UK.

 OK here’s what you do, forget what ‘other countries’ might have and forget what other UK providers might offer - alas not in your area, sorry about that!

What can you get right now where you are from various providers? If VM are the only option for fast services then your choices are a) bend over and pay then whatever they demand ; or b) move somewhere else which has more choices!

OK sorry this might sound a bit harsh, but it is the reality of how the world works, pay what they demand or don’t and find and alternative supplier. Otherwise known as ‘free market economics’

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the prompt. As usual, due to an overwhelming surplus of CBA, I've still not given Virgin notice - though that will change the soon as I get off hold.

I did indeed order up an FTTP connection via the other big mobile provider that also uses red in their logo and starts with a V. So far, it's been perfect. Got new fibre line installed at the exact point in the house I wanted it, to the nearest Openreach (no City Fibre or other 3rd party infrastructure here) street cabinet (181m pull according to the engineer) two days earlier than planned. I ended up going with the 500/70mbps connection which with an existing customer discount came in at £27pm plus a £90 cashback from a cashback site, on a 24 month contract.

Big carboard box delivered with new router/wifi box, backup 4g data dongle and a couple of mesh/extenders. These haven't even been out of the box. I told the engineer I had no intention of using them as I'd got a fully wired network in the house plus a standalone firewall/router and three finely tuned wifi6 access points so he tested the light levels, pronounced them all good and went off to the pub an hour early.

So far, so good after 3 months. Seem to invariably get 540mbps down and 76mbps up with consistently lower latency than my VM connection. Not had a moment of downtime as far as my external availability monitoring reports. Didn't even end up needing to configure a specific VLAN for the PPPoE connection on the firewall. I also got allocated a static public IP address after asking the customer care people, which makes work life even more straightforward for me. Wife is happy, as her constant work Google Meet meets are much more stable from a voice and video perspective. My VPN connections to my office, our data centre and even the French house are spot on (though I rarely had trouble with VM to be fair). Our new Freeview/Freeview Play/Android TV set top PVR box seems to work a treat (and still has too many channels) and seems at least comparable, if not better, to the VM Tivo box and I've even finally set up the HDHomerun Quattro on the network to feed live TV into my Plex server which I tend to use from my desktops/laptops.

New provider gave us a new VoIP based "line" but I've not been using it as they say they don't support VoIP connectivity outside of their router which I'm obviously not using and they can't provide any config or credentials for 3rd party VoIP devices. I can apparently fire up their router and sniff the traffic to extract server and login details from the handshakes if I really want, but I'm just as happy with the Sipgate "line" configured on a Grandstream ATA to retain the use of the regular home phones. I will still try and port our VM number across to Sipgate but it's apparently no longer a show stopper if it doesn't work out.

All in all, it's been totally painless but I did have the luxury of not being under any time pressure to have a switchover on a certain day and could afford (technically and financially) to maintain and use both conenctions up till now. As ever, the real test will be when something goes wrong....

Sorry, proper ramble, that. 😊

[moof]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I ended up going with the 500/70mbps connection which with an existing customer discount came in at £27pm plus a £90 cashback from a cashback site, on a 24 month contract.

👏🏻 informative reply @Anonymous. THANK-YOU! 

and at £27pm thats 70% of my current VM monthly 🙌🏻 Not to be sniffed at!

appreciate I have to cost in other monthly bytes, but I would get the speed I need and nothing more.

cheers for getting back to me

[Matthew_ML]

Hey MatthewVX, thank you for your post today and sorry to see you will leaving us shortly. It always a sad thing to see a customer leave. 

If you are looking to take your number with you, please let your new provider know and they will do everything for you in the background. 

They will reach out to us and we work together to port the number over. This can take up to 10 days. Thanks 

[martintsw]

Hi @Paulina

>>> Ideally we would love to keep you on as customers, but we understand that you have to do what's best for you. You can contact us on 150/ 03454541111 - option 1, option 4, and option 4 again to discuss this further with our team.

I am also on the journey of porting my landline number away from VM with the intention of later ceasing the 1gig service and all services once I am in a position to do so.

The reason?  I have received such a poor service for over month, engineers ignoring the call, supervisors not calling back to deal with the complain or answering emails... and I called the above number you gave and they had no way to escalate for me.. all they could do is cease the service if I had wished at that point.

I did feel after a month without service, the £15 compensation was a little poor for the 1gig service, and being with you since "day 1" for over 15 years.