I had something similar happen with my own number several years back. Comcast was supposed to port it to my new carrier but the port didn't go through. They temporarily routed my TN to another phone number they had, but as soon as I returned my equipment, my phone number ended up in Never Never Land. I'd ported my number to Comcast, so they claimed they gave it back to the originating carrier. Thank goodness I had access to NPAC so I could look it up and tell them it was still associated with their LRN in NPAC. I'd look up the TN in NPAC to find out what SPID is associated with the LRN for that number. That will tell you who has it in their inventory. Then you can go to that carrier and get them to port it to your carrier. I had to escalate my issue up the ladder to make it happen, so most likely you'll have to escalate as well. The regular customer service people don't usually know enough to put you in contact with the correct person. You can also look up the LNP contact for that company in NPAC. MARY LOU CAREY BackUP Telecom Consulting Office: 615-791-9969 Cell: 615-796-1111 On 2026-07-09 09:27 PM, Jamie Montgomery via VoiceOps wrote:
When a number is disconnected, it * should * be put in an 'aging' state where it cant be reused for 90 days if its residential, or a year if it's a business. The LEC entity that the number was assigned to * should * have 'snapped' the number back to the original LEC when it disconnected if it wasnt the original block holder. Those are FCC rules, so I would think you have time to get it back.
Jamie M
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From: voiceops-request@voiceops.org <voiceops-request@voiceops.org> Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2026 5:00 PM To: voiceops@voiceops.org <voiceops@voiceops.org> Subject: [EXTERNAL] VoiceOps Digest, Vol 11, Issue 1
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Recovering a number? (Carlos Alvarez) 2. Re: Recovering a number? (Aaron C. de Bruyn)
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Message: 1 Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2026 10:48:23 -0700 From: Carlos Alvarez <caalvarez@gmail.com> Subject: [VoiceOps] Re: Recovering a number? To: VoiceOps <voiceops@voiceops.org> Message-ID: <CAEu0Vi09+aPiTFX+pudt5MgZVb46aUtwmVFUtGxgiFymdW68kA@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000001e81e30656313bcb"
I think I'd try porting it anyway and see what happens. I've had one success with this where the number was dropped by the customer-facing company, but it was still with Twilio, and they let it go.
On Jul 9, 2026 at 10:15:25 AM, Aaron C. de Bruyn via VoiceOps < voiceops@voiceops.org> wrote:
Hey everyone,
I've run into a situation I've never dealt with before, and it's personal...
My dear old mother has had a phone number in the 509-427 prefix for about 50 years now.
It's survived all the US West, Qwest, Embarq, Century Link, Lumen, whatever changes over the decades...and finalle ended up taking a deal from her ISP (a CLEC) to bundle her phone/internet .
This all worked out pretty well until a few year or so when the ISP was sold to new management and service tanked. They've had several multi-day and even a multi-week outage.
Fast forward to a month ago, and my mom decided to sign up for Starlink and cancel her old DSL bundle. Being 80 years old, she had no idea her "home phone" was linked to her DSL service....and as luck would have it, the day after she cancelled she ended up having a minor stroke.
When I realized her home phone was disconnected, I asked her to call her former ISP and see if they could recover and just port out the number...my intent being to attach it to my existing infrastructure and simply forward calls to her cell phone.
Her ISP said "we released the number 2 weeks ago, there's no way to get it back".
I know I've seen numbers get recovered before...but since I'm not a CLEC or anything other than just a guy who helps support a handful of VoIP installs, it's beyond me if it's possible or how I could get the number back.
I also seem to recall ~8 years ago that the local switch didn't support number portability and it doesn't show up as having any numbers available if I try to acquire a number out of the "STEVENSON WA" area.
Am I out of luck?
Thanks,
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