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”