hardScenarioDesignMidSeniorStaff
A customer ports their number away to another operator. What has to happen on your side, and what usually goes wrong?
7 min readUpdated 2026-08-15Target archetype: Enterprise Captive
Answer
Short answer
A port is an externally timed event you do not control, so your cease has to land with it and not before. The failures are asymmetric: cease early and the customer loses service, cease late and you keep billing a number you no longer serve while usage records still arrive.
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Likely follow-ups
- Usage records for the ported number arrive dated after the port. What do you do with them?
- The customer has three lines on one account and ports one. What must not happen to the other two?
- How do you handle a port request for a number with an in-flight change order against it?
- The customer disputes the port and wants to come back. What does that look like as a process?
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