Can I Switch To VOIP, But Keep My Landline Number?
Posted July 30, 2008 by Mister Knowitall

Mr. Knowitall recently got off the phone with a client who was thinking about switching to VOIP to save money. Besides the standard per minute rates that were jacking up his client’s bill, he found out they were paying nearly $1,000 a month in foreign exchange service fees.

Decades ago, when the company moved their factory to another part of Los Angeles, they wanted to keep their old phone numbers. Back in the day, the first two or three digits of your phone number were your exchange and indicated the central office to which the call should be switched.

If you moved to another part of the city and were now served by another central office, keeping your old phone number required you to sign up for foreign exchange service, which was a special circuit set up to route your incoming calls from your old central office to your new one. And this service could be expensive. Mr. Knowitall’s client stated that they were paying $200-300 per line for 4 lines to be forwarded in this way.

So going to VOIP wouldn’t just save then $30 or $50 a month on long distance fees. It could save them $800-1200 if they could switch these lines to the VOIP provider and get rid of these pesky fees. But could they?

Well, lucky for them, the FCC issued an order on October 31, 2007, extending phone number portability to VOIP. You can now move your home or business phone number to VOIP from a landline just like you can move it from landline to cellular or from cell to cell.

The question is whether they need to move to VOIP to get rid of these foreign exchange fees. Mr. Knowitall advised his clients to call AT&T (their landline service provider in Los Angeles) and ask what could be done about this. With the advances in technology and new services, there was no reason the phone company should be charging them those fees anymore. Probably the only reason it was still going on was because no one asked the phone company if a modern alternative could cut their costs.

Either way, Mr. Knowitall’s client is going to save thousands a year.