Digital voice porting landline number

Hi. 1st post here so please excuse if this is in the wrong section. I'm currently with Vodafone but I guess the question can relate to any ISP. I will be moving home soon to a new area of the country to a new house with FTTH installed by Openreach. My current contract is with Vodafone via FTTC and my intention is to stick with them when I move. I understand the I can port my landline number to the new service but I'm wondering if that is the case will it include my existing area code or will I be given a new code appropriate for the new area?

You would have the existing area code - the chances of the number being available in the new area code is fairly low. If you are not already on digital voice then my guess is you will be moved onto it - with digital voice there is absolutely no reason to stop an area code from being used anywhere.

You could also consider moving your number to VoIP so you are in control of it rather than Vodafone but that has complications and can result in FTTC being cancelled if not handled carefully.

Number portability is really the ability to keep your existing phone number when moving between providers while remaining at the same address , it’s not the ability to take the number with you to a different location…there can be ‘home mover’ situations where the consumer is moving such a short distance ( so not across their existing exchange boundary ) , that the existing provider arranges to move the number the short distance to the new address …that isn’t number portability and some providers even in that situation will allocate a new number even if the STD and exchange prefix code could remain the same.

The technicality is irrelevant, if maintaining a linked number scheme is of value , and Ofcom and the Emergency services for two bodies believe it is , ensuring the STD code and the first couple of digits indicates the geographic location is more than desirable it’s a requirement, so it doesn’t matter if it’s technically possible to take (for example) your Manchester telephone number to Glasgow ( because you are moving from Manchester to Glasgow ) , in that situation you are allocated a Glasgow number to reflect the area you are living in , because those are the rules.

Some providers have an option and may offer a non area specific number , a number that’s not associated with any geographic area , like an 0330 type numbers where there is no indication where the number is ‘based’

In short your current phone number with VF will be ‘ceased’ and in effect quarantined for a while , and then possibly reused in the future by someone else in the town or city you are leaving and you will get a new number that is associated with the area you are moving to , or depending on the provider, possibly a non area specific number , but you definitely won’t keep your old number from the town or city you are leaving.

As stated , moving to a non traditional supplier using VoIP (so porting your number to a VoIP supplier before you move address ) would give this flexibility because the VoIP provider doesn’t care where you are in the country when you access their services, but providers of scale that use a proprietary version of IP telephony, so Vodafone, BT , Sky etc shouldn’t offer this type of back door method of taking a number with you to a different part if the country.

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 10-Sep-25 14:29:06)

Independent voip providers will let you have whatever area code you want. I have had one totally out of area. The voip service needs to know where the phone is located geographically for emergency services, but if you are running voip independently of your ISP, there is nothing to stop you picking up your vioip kit and plugging into the internet anywhere. It is advisable to keep the voip provider informed if you move home for 999 calls.

In reply to a post by DFScale:

Independent voip providers will let you have whatever area code you want. I have had one totally out of area. The voip service needs to know where the phone is located geographically for emergency services, but if you are running voip independently of your ISP, there is nothing to stop you picking up your vioip kit and plugging into the internet anywhere. It is advisable to keep the voip provider informed if you move home for 999 calls.

I was just about to post the same thing so thanks for saving me some time

And of course that VoIP number could be access from a client on a mobile phone and therefore their home could be in the south of England but they might call 999 when they are somewhere completely different. VoIP changes things totally as the number is not tied to a physical location and therefore some of the reliance on that for emergency services is going to become more difficult. I am not sure if all VoIP clients send the location when emergency services is called?

I did point out this ‘subversive’ way of taking a number associated with an area , into a different geographical area , something mass market providers of scale can’t or don’t do, they presumably are required to maintain the policy of keeping the link between the telephone number and area of the country that the number is associated with , and don’t allow that to be subverted , they maintain the valuable historical link between the phone number and area not least as it’s useful to the emergency services.

VoIP providers either through some legal loophole excluding them from this policy, or them simply having a laissez faire attitude toward this and Ofcom lacking the testicular fortitude to do anything about it ,offer this ‘back door’ route to maintaining a number ‘out of area’….personally I don’t see this repeated OFCOM trait of having one rule for some and a different rule for others as a positive, in my opinion it simply demonstrates the ineptitude of that organisation, however if someone can take advantage of this back door route as it’s offered by seemingly legal means that’s entirely up to them…as domestic landline telephony becomes somewhat irrelevant , I dare say the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to enforcement if these VoIP providers are doing something overtly wrong

Edited by Iniltous (Wed 10-Sep-25 16:01:04)

If you want to keep the same landline number, but in a different geographic location, then my advice would be to port it to an independent VOIP service provider. It will provide far greater flexibility than a bundled VOIP service from an ISP. Probably cheaper too. At least it is in my case.

It's how I've been running my various landlines for a decade or more. These days our landlines pretty much exist on our mobile phones only via the Acrobits Groundwire app (really excellent btw). I gave up on separate physical handsets about 5 years ago. The apps are far more flexible for us, and we take our "landines" wherever we are.

Edited by Pheasant (Wed 10-Sep-25 16:30:02)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

VoIP providers either through some legal loophole excluding them from this policy, or them simply having a laissez faire attitude toward this and Ofcom lacking the testicular fortitude to do anything about it ,offer this ‘back door’ route to maintaining a number ‘out of area’….personally I don’t see this repeated OFCOM trait of having one rule for some and a different rule for others as a positive, in my opinion it simply demonstrates the ineptitude of that organisation,

There is no back door. Ofcom took a decision that out of area numbering was acceptable subject only to the person being given an out of area number actually agreeing. Consequentially,, the VoIP operator is obliged to notify the authorities of the address at which the number is used and route emergency calls to the appropriate area emergency services.

That many of the ISP VoIP operators don't allow out of area numbers is not a reflection of them adhering to rules that the smaller VoIP operators ignore. Rather, I would think that it is the ISP VoIP operators not wanting to undertake the admin for out of areas numbers.

In reply to a post by ian72:

And of course that VoIP number could be access from a client on a mobile phone and therefore their home could be in the south of England but they might call 999 when they are somewhere completely different. VoIP changes things totally as the number is not tied to a physical location and therefore some of the reliance on that for emergency services is going to become more difficult. I am not sure if all VoIP clients send the location when emergency services is called?

None do as far as I’m aware. The regulations state the VoIP service provider has to keep a registered address associated with the number for location of emergency services calls.

However as you state there is nothing to stop that emergency number being called from anywhere on the planet if the user is roaming on a mobile device. Albeit it would be very odd to dial 999 from your VoIP app rather than natively on your mobile in case of a true emergency if you were away from “home”

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

I did point out this ‘subversive’ way of taking a number associated with an area , into a different geographical area , something mass market providers of scale can’t or don’t do, they presumably are required to maintain the policy of keeping the link between the telephone number and area of the country that the number is associated with , and don’t allow that to be subverted , they maintain the valuable historical link between the phone number and area not least as it’s useful to the emergency services.

VoIP providers either through some legal loophole excluding them from this policy, or them simply having a laissez faire attitude toward this and Ofcom lacking the testicular fortitude to do anything about it ,offer this ‘back door’ route to maintaining a number ‘out of area’….personally I don’t see this repeated OFCOM trait of having one rule for some and a different rule for others as a positive, in my opinion it simply demonstrates the ineptitude of that organisation, however if someone can take advantage of this back door route as it’s offered by seemingly legal means that’s entirely up to them…as domestic landline telephony becomes somewhat irrelevant , I dare say the juice isn’t worth the squeeze when it comes to enforcement if these VoIP providers are doing something overtly wrong

Please show me where in the Ofcom regulations it is against the regulations to allow a geographic number to be ported and utilised outside of the original / associated service area?

you show me in the regulations where it’s allowed , the fact that major suppliers don’t offer it suggests it’s not something encouraged , if it were wouldn’t at least some providers offer it (excluding the traditional VoIP brigade )

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 09:45:13)

Haha. Oh sorry I'm not into playing silly games like this.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

you show me in the regulations where it’s allowed , the fact that major suppliers don’t offer it suggests it’s not something encouraged , if it were wouldn’t at least some providers offer it (excluding the traditional VoIP brigade )

Don't you think smaller players would have been reprimanded by Ofcom if they were breaching regulations?

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/docume... Section 1 says it is permitted. Section 3.3 identifies the qualifying conditions in B3.1.1 of the Numbering Plan.

Would you like gravy with your pie?

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/docume...

Read the overview and ‘what we decided in brief’ seems pretty conclusive to me .
Presumably your juvenile ‘gravy’ remark is some sort of ‘you’ve been served’ reference…very funny if you are a teenager

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 10:24:36)

Hi,

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/docume...

Read the overview and ‘what we decided in brief’ seems pretty conclusive to me .
Presumably your juvenile ‘gravy’ remark is some sort of ‘you’ve been served’ reference…very funny if you are a teenager

To quote the document: "These rules permit out-of-area use of geographic numbers which we consider provides an important degree of flexibility in number use for people and businesses."

That is a pretty unambiguous statement that out of area numbering is permitted and if there was any uncertainty then, as others have pointed out, section B3.3.1 further clarifies the position that out of area codes are permitted.

I cannot see how any reasonable reading would reach a conclusion that out of area number is not permitted.

I suspect the pie you should be contemplating is of the humble variety.

Edited by Dassa (Thu 11-Sep-25 12:30:51)

‘We are keeping the existing rules on geographic numbering which allocate the first few digits of a landline phone number to an area (the area code) and provide location significance’
That is also a pretty unambiguous statement, perhaps the OP will return when they have moved to a different part of the country and share if VF (as they intend to keep the same provider) enabled them to keep their existing number including the STD code once they have moved or not , if the OP gets VF to provide them with the same number they currently have in a different town or city to where they currently reside I’ll happily eat humble pie ,

…..I’ll concede that any statement by me that VoIP providers are breaking rules may be a little overblown , but the Ofcom document is somewhat contradictory, STD codes associated with a location is either a useful geographical association or it’s not useful , if it’s the case that flexibility to move numbers around the country is good but keeping the geographical link is also good , then which takes preference, you have your opinion on which is better and I’ll keep my opinion on which is better,.

Presumably VoIP providers don’t see a value in a geographical link to the area code , whereas traditional providers do hence the apparent difference in their approach, if both are ‘legal’ …I dare the emergency services love getting 999 calls from apparently one area and but despatched to somewhere seemingly different.

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 14:12:57)

I think the geographical link had become tenuous from the number itself anyway.

Within a single area (ie 01234) there are thousands of phone numbers and premises. For years you have been able to move numbers between houses within an area - so the other 6 digits have had no bearing on where you are within the geographic area.

On that basis just knowing the area code is useless for pinpointing where someone is. You need a database that links the full number with the actual location. And if you have a database that does that then what does it matter if you take the area code and the 6 digit number with you when you move out of area - the only way the emergency services are going to find you is by knowing the actual location the full number is at.

The area covered by my local area code is approximately 25Km x 25Km. That is a pretty big haystack to find a needle unless you have a location database for every full number.

Hi,

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

‘We are keeping the existing rules on geographic numbering which allocate the first few digits of a landline phone number to an area (the area code) and provide location significance’
That is also a pretty unambiguous statement, perhaps the OP will return when they have moved to a different part of the country and share if VF (as they intend to keep the same provider) enabled them to keep their existing number including the STD code once they have moved or not , if the OP gets VF to provide them with the same number they currently have in a different town or city to where they currently reside I’ll happily eat humble pie ,

I take that as a statement that Ofcom is retaining the concept of area codes rather than, for example, abolishing new allocations in the 01 and 02 ranges and requiring all new numbers to be allocated in the 03 range.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

…..I’ll concede that any statement by me that VoIP providers are breaking rules may be a little overblown , but the Ofcom document is somewhat contradictory, STD codes associated with a location is either a useful geographical association or it’s not useful , if it’s the case that flexibility to move numbers around the country is good but keeping the geographical link is also good , then which takes preference, you have your opinion on which is better and I’ll keep my opinion on which is better,.

It is useful for those who want to deem it to be useful. I suspect that Ofcom chooses not to have an opinion on what useful means, especially as VOIP makes practical enforcement of some opinions impossible.

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

Presumably VoIP providers don’t see a value in a geographical link to the area code , whereas traditional providers do hence the apparent difference in their approach, if both are ‘legal’ …I dare the emergency services love getting 999 calls from apparently one area and but despatched to somewhere seemingly different.

VOIP providers are required to retain records linking the number to an address and automatically provide that data in the event of an emergency call being made. Obviously that is unhelpful if the end customer chooses not to use the number in a way that links it to an address.

I have an "out of area" number on one of my VoIP connections. Three have my local area code but the fourth is certainly not.

In reply to a post by ian72:

I think the geographical link had become tenuous from the number itself anyway.

Within a single area (ie 01234) there are thousands of phone numbers and premises. For years you have been able to move numbers between houses within an area - so the other 6 digits have had no bearing on where you are within the geographic area.

On that basis just knowing the area code is useless for pinpointing where someone is. You need a database that links the full number with the actual location. And if you have a database that does that then what does it matter if you take the area code and the 6 digit number with you when you move out of area - the only way the emergency services are going to find you is by knowing the actual location the full number is at.

The area covered by my local area code is approximately 25Km x 25Km. That is a pretty big haystack to find a needle unless you have a location database for every full number.

That’s not really true , an example, 0164246 **** and 0164247 **** share the same STD code (01642) which is Middlesbrough , but are separate , adjacent local exchange areas , Eston Grange and Redcar , one considered a suburb of Middlesbrough and the other a very small neighbouring town , they share an exchange boundary….should an ESG customer move across the exchange boundary into RBZ area , currently a home mover request would be rejected (as stated it’s not number portability in the accepted sense if you are moving address ) ..as far as the STD code being potentially covering such a large area as to be unhelpful, in the example, a call to the police (for example) the STD code and the next few digits indicate the local exchange area so reducing significantly the area the call could have been made from , it’s not just the STD code that’s indicative of the local area but also the next 2 or 3 digits .

It’s not often any individual line is more than 10 miles from the exchange as you historically would run into operational difficulties on electromagnetic equipment like Strowger, basically the upper line length at which signalling and transmission are possible, the majority of ‘lines’ would be no more than a couple of miles long and often very much less …if your local exchange areas (not STD area ) is as large as you say then it’s likely to be rural and not really representative .

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 15:50:04)

I believe that changed when digital exchanges came in. I have moved phone numbers within an exchange area - about 3 miles from the original location. I don't have proof that you could do it anywhere within an exchange but if the address is 3 miles away from the previous address then without a geolocation database it is still useless to emergency services.

Digital exchanges made no difference to the ‘rules’ around home movers …arguably some LLU operators took a different view , and may have ignored exchange boundaries once a number was imported into their own network or were issuing numbers from their own allocated number ranges .

In the example given , an ESG 47**** customer , their physical copper pair in effect goes back to one exchange Eston if they move to Redcar the cable pair goes back Redcar a completely different exchange, the 47 number is provisioned on an ESG equipment that is impossible to ‘jumper’ to a cable pair in Redcar ….its not impossible to force the system to allocate a Redcar equipment with an Eston number , but it was never offered …basically the address would be aligned to Redcar and a therefore Redcar number would be allocated , the change to System X , System Y didn’t change that ….some LLU operators (Talk Talk for example ) may have taken a different view with the way they allocated their own MSAN resources , but AFAIR Sky for example anecdotally were resistant to home movers taking their Sky number with them when their customer was not even moving across exchange boundaries , suggesting that a new number to had be allocated for home movers in all situations

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 16:31:00)

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/docume...

Read the overview and ‘what we decided in brief’ seems pretty conclusive to me .
Presumably your juvenile ‘gravy’ remark is some sort of ‘you’ve been served’ reference…very funny if you are a teenager

Yep, ‘what we decided in brief’, includes these words: These rules permit out-of-area use of geographic numbers which we consider provides an important degree of flexibility in number use for people and businesses.

You can have custard and gravy with your pie if you like ...

Post deleted by seb

Edited by Iniltous (Thu 11-Sep-25 18:35:14)

In reply to a post by Dassa:

Hi,

In reply to a post by Iniltous:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/docume...

Read the overview and ‘what we decided in brief’ seems pretty conclusive to me .
Presumably your juvenile ‘gravy’ remark is some sort of ‘you’ve been served’ reference…very funny if you are a teenager

To quote the document: "These rules permit out-of-area use of geographic numbers which we consider provides an important degree of flexibility in number use for people and businesses."

That is a pretty unambiguous statement that out of area numbering is permitted and if there was any uncertainty then, as others have pointed out, section B3.3.1 further clarifies the position that out of area codes are permitted.

I cannot see how any reasonable reading would reach a conclusion that out of area number is not permitted.

I suspect the pie you should be contemplating is of the humble variety.

Pretty categoric really. Thanks for the post.

I have two "landline" numbers from two different independent VOIP providers and neither is for my local area code. One is adjacent, the other is miles away.

Both providers required me to verify my actual address for emergency purposes.

The suggestion that it is important to have a local number is somewhat moot, gven that there are many nowadays who choose do do away with any kind of fixed-line service and rely solely on cellular (mobile) for calls - including emergency.

I wholly support the suggestion that you separate your telephone service from your ISP. Whilst "bundling" may appear to be simple, in practice it's typically more costly than using separate services; and by separating them, you can, for example, switch ISP at will - you can even use a mobile data service or satellite - and maintain your number without formality. Wherever you happen to be.

For mobiles using standard telephony the mobile will normally share the GPS location with emergency services. Not sure if VoIP clients would do the same but someone else in this thread did say people are more likely to call 999 using the phone than their VoIP.

In reference to www.gov.uk/guidance/999-and-112-the-uks-national-emergency-numbers:

Calls made using 999 or 112 are identified and prioritised by the communications providers and forwarded to, and then answered by, call handling agents in one of 7 call-handling centres. The call-handling centres are owned by BT Plc, who operate the service on behalf of all the communications providers (mobile, fixed line and broadband). An agent at one of the BT Plc call-handling centres responds with “emergency, which service?”. The geographic location of the caller, which is normally automatically available, enables the call to be transferred to the relevant geographically located emergency service control room.

Providers not only have to retain records but feed the data to the emergency call handling centre when a call is made. The primary purpose being to ensure the call is routed to the correct service. Information for calls from a mobile phone, whether using a mobile allocated number or landline allocated number via VOIP, would be provided via the protocol for mobile networks that use the mobile cell data with any data transmitted by the phone.