By Victoria Palmer
You may have heard that the industry’s new “Right to Port” rule – more specifically an update to General Condition C7 – came into effect on April 3rd 2023. The industry-agreed interpretation of Right to Port is that an End User will have the right to submit a port request for a number that was previously associated with a service that has ceased. For the rule to apply, the request must be submitted within 31 calendar days of the service being terminated.
As such, we will be implementing a new process that will allow End Users to reclaim numbers as per the above, for at least the prescribed one month post-termination period. During the 31 day ‘right to port’ period the number(s) will need to remain on your account and any export requests will be validated as usual.
Currently, when you request to remove/delete a ported number, the team submit a cease request with the completion date determined by industry minimum lead times. The process itself will remain the same, however the completion date on all ceases will now be 31 days from the date we receive the request from you. This may be later should this date fall on a weekend or bank holiday. In cases where Simwood are the range holder you can continue to remove numbers yourself, however this should not be done until 31 days after the number becomes out of service.
We hope you will all honour end users’ right to port during this period, however, penalty charges may apply if the rule is not followed.
Please feel free to raise a ticket with our friendly neighbourhood porting team should you have any questions.
