Your phone numbers are portable

This may not be exactly a shock to many of you but your phone numbers, including your cell phone numbers are portable. You can move them from carrier to carrier. Many carriers will perform this transfer at no additional fee.

The United States, Canada and Iceland are the only three countries in the world that offer full number portability mandated by federal (or equivalent) laws. This means that you can move your land line number to a cell carrier and vice versa. As well, you are legally able to move your number from any carrier to any carrier that provides service in the same area. In the United States it all began in 1997 with the FCC mandating that all land lines should become portable. In 2003 wireless phone numbers were added to the mandate and in 2007, the FCC added VOIP service providers to the mandate. Now, your options are wide and many.

The only catch is that transferring a number can take a little time. In our experience it typically takes anywhere from 5 days to 1 month to complete depending in the source carrier. However, there is no need to be without your number while moving your service. At Third Hatch we have handled many number transfers from carriers all over the United States. We provide our customers a simple and easy way to transfer their numbers with zero or near zero downtime.