Recovering a number?
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, -A
I think the only option would be to contact the ILEC that the number originated with. According to npanxxsource.com that would be CenturyLink/Lumen. On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:22 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,
-A _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list -- VoiceOps@voiceops.org https://lists.voiceops.org/postorius/lists/voiceops.voiceops.org/ To unsubscribe send an email to voiceops-leave@voiceops.org
-- Jeff Shultz Central Office Technician SCTC (503) 769-2125 Go Big - Ask for 5 Gig -- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!! <https://www.facebook.com/SCTCWEB/> <https://www.instagram.com/sctc_sctc/> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3> <https://www.youtube.com/c/sctcvideos> _**** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****_
The block is listed as portable. On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:30 AM Jeff Shultz <jeffshultz@sctcweb.com> wrote:
I think the only option would be to contact the ILEC that the number originated with. According to npanxxsource.com that would be CenturyLink/Lumen.
On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:22 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,
-A _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list -- VoiceOps@voiceops.org https://lists.voiceops.org/postorius/lists/voiceops.voiceops.org/ To unsubscribe send an email to voiceops-leave@voiceops.org
-- Jeff Shultz Central Office Technician SCTC (503) 769-2125 Go Big - Ask for 5 Gig
-- Jeff Shultz Central Office Technician SCTC (503) 769-2125 Go Big - Ask for 5 Gig -- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!! <https://www.facebook.com/SCTCWEB/> <https://www.instagram.com/sctc_sctc/> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3> <https://www.youtube.com/c/sctcvideos> _**** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****_
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,
-A _______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list -- VoiceOps@voiceops.org https://lists.voiceops.org/postorius/lists/voiceops.voiceops.org/ To unsubscribe send an email to voiceops-leave@voiceops.org
Thanks everyone! Great advice. I received several off-list replies from people and domains that I know and trust. Nothing's fast in number porting, but I think I'm in pretty good hands working towards a solution. -A On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:15 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> 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,
-A
Hey everyone, Huge shout-out to Sinch and Twilio. They worked together to help me recover the number. You have no idea how many different people and places have that number for contacting my mother--everything from her bank and doctors to life-long friends. Heck--one time when I dropped my cell in a lake and had to wait a week for a new one, several of my friends from childhood remembered my home number and called my mom to check if I was ok. ;) My sincerest thanks! -A On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 11:05 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
Thanks everyone!
Great advice.
I received several off-list replies from people and domains that I know and trust.
Nothing's fast in number porting, but I think I'm in pretty good hands working towards a solution.
-A
On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:15 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> 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,
-A
When I dropped my phone in a lake, I picked one up on the way home! Where do you live that it takes a week? There’s some funny timing here. We recently did some ports out of Twilio from an industry-specific web app company that (attempts to) integrate phone service. The customer neglected to give us all the numbers, and one was “lost.” But Twilio doesn’t follow any normal processes or rules. So I simply started a new port with all the same info, same form (which was missing that number too…they didn’t notice), and it completed yesterday. On Jul 14, 2026 at 8:18:08 AM, Aaron C. de Bruyn via VoiceOps < voiceops@voiceops.org> wrote:
Hey everyone,
Huge shout-out to Sinch and Twilio. They worked together to help me recover the number.
You have no idea how many different people and places have that number for contacting my mother--everything from her bank and doctors to life-long friends. Heck--one time when I dropped my cell in a lake and had to wait a week for a new one, several of my friends from childhood remembered my home number and called my mom to check if I was ok. ;)
My sincerest thanks!
-A
On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 11:05 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> wrote:
Thanks everyone!
Great advice.
I received several off-list replies from people and domains that I know and trust.
Nothing's fast in number porting, but I think I'm in pretty good hands working towards a solution.
-A
On Thu, Jul 9, 2026 at 10:15 AM Aaron C. de Bruyn <aaron@heyaaron.com> 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,
-A
_______________________________________________ VoiceOps mailing list -- VoiceOps@voiceops.org https://lists.voiceops.org/postorius/lists/voiceops.voiceops.org/ To unsubscribe send an email to voiceops-leave@voiceops.org
On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 8:35 AM Carlos Alvarez via VoiceOps < voiceops@voiceops.org> wrote:
When I dropped my phone in a lake, I picked one up on the way home! Where do you live that it takes a week?
Back around 2008 you could drop by any cell phone store and buy a new cell phone. You'd roll the dice and usually end up with some 3rd-party crapware installed. The one that royally irked me was a Verizon phone that forced me to have some NFL app installed and no matter what I did, I would get random notifications of upcoming football games and scores. There was no disabling it. Or you could end up with "Bixby" forced on you. Ugh. I've had a personal policy for the last ~20 years to always buy my phone outright from Google so it's the stock Android experience. I dropped it in the lake on a Friday evening. Add in the weekend, and Google taking a few days to process and ship and it adds up to about a week. -A
participants (3)
-
Aaron C. de Bruyn -
Carlos Alvarez -
Jeff Shultz