moving to new office and can't keep our number

[lilelvis2000]

Wife is moving her office to a new location about 9 miles away. Apparently this office is on a different telephone exchange though the area prefix code is the same. She's a bit upset at this as she's just printed a load of letterhead with the old number on it.

Anybody know why that would be? I'd always though that as long as you are in the same prefix code area - you could keep your number.

[administrator]

Yup, think the number is tied to the exchange, densely populated areas are covered by multiple exchanges and this does mean that numbers can't always be transferred.

Telco should be offering recorded message service to let callers know about number change or seamless forwarding. Forwarding could be costly but compare this to the price of the stationery to decide which is the least painful I guess.

[lilelvis2000]

Yeah its about £8/mnth for a message and about £25/mnth for the forwarding plus £50 setup cost..so probably cheaper to reprint and run the message for a couple of months.

Wife still not happy. Would like me to break the laws of physics this time.

[oversteer]

about £25/mnth for the forwarding

Aren't call forwarding costs on top of that?

Is there any way to port the number to a VOIP provider first?

[lilelvis2000]

Aren't call forwarding costs on top of that?

Is there any way to port the number to a VOIP provider first?

Good point. I'll look into it. Though I can't for the life of me think of any technical reasons why the number would need to be changed. Except of course that it is a great way to make money for BT.