Moving your business number to another provider

In Canada, local number portability is governed by the CRTC: your number follows you when you change providers. A business line needs a signed letter of authorization and a recent bill whose details match. One rule matters more than the rest.

Never cancel the old service before the port completes. A cancelled number returns to the carrier's pool, and it is not always recoverable. It is the only irreversible mistake in this process.

Why the advice you find does not apply

Search for number porting and you will get consumer mobile content (switching cell carriers and keeping your number) or French pages explaining the code RIO, which does not exist in Canada.

A business line does not work that way. The transfer is not instant, it usually involves several numbers at once, and it can break things a mobile plan does not have: a hunt group, a billing telephone number, an extension wired to a fax machine.

What the new provider will ask for

Three things, and they have to match exactly what the old carrier has on file:

• A letter of authorization, signed by the person authorised on the account.
• A recent bill from the current provider.
• The account number and service address as they appear on that bill.

The most common cause of rejection is not a refusal: it is a mismatch. "123 Main St" against "123 Main Street, Suite 4" is enough to fail the request. Copy the bill, not your letterhead.

The mistake that costs a number

The instinct is understandable: nobody wants to pay two providers at once, so the old service gets cancelled the moment the new one is ready.

The number has to be active with the old carrier to be ported. Cancelling first releases it, and a released number can be reassigned. You will overlap by a few days. That is the cost of the insurance, and it is trivial next to reprinting cards, signage and every online business listing you have.

Partial ports

If you are moving only some of your numbers, say so explicitly. A group configured at the old carrier (a main number that overflows to three others) stops behaving like a group the moment half of it leaves.

This is the moment to decide what each number becomes: which one is the main line, which rings one person directly, and which no longer needs to exist.

What we do, and what we do not

We prepare the port with you: details checked before submission, routing built in advance, and nothing cut over until the number has actually arrived. There is no self-serve porting in the product today. This is something we run with you, not a button.

We can also supply a new local number if you have nothing to move. Quebec's area codes covers which one fits your region.

This describes a regulatory process, not legal advice. Porting rules come from the CRTC, and your contract with your current provider may carry its own cancellation terms.