Recently we had to change phone companies, it was my wife’s mobile phone from Vodafone through to Telstra, this was so we can bundle everything eventually in the new area we are in, and also as Vodafone doesn’t have much coverage in our area on the Northside of Brisbane, by not much, I mean nothing at our house.
As I haven’t transferred a number across to a new company before I thought there must be a lot of people who either don’t know how to do it or don’t know that they can do it.
I was told firstly that I just had to ring our Vodafone sales representative and he would sort it out, I found out this wasn’t the case.
These were the questions I had to answer and or research before I started taking the time to call people and get things done, not in any order either, just written as they come to mind.
- Who do I ring get the phone change over done, Vodafone or Telstra?
- Can I bring my own phone across?
- What mobile plans are there on the Telstra network and can I have my mobile phone added to my current home phone bill?
- How long does it take?
- What information will I need to change mobile phone networks?
- Can I keep my current mobile phone number when I change phone companies?
- Do I need internet connection supplied for my new phone plan?
- What is the best value mobile phone plan on the Telstra network?
- How do I unlock my phone from the Vodafone Network?
As you can see, not to straight forward but it ended up, after a phone call or two being not a bad, easy process.
Firstly, I rung our current Vodafone sales rep and explained we were leaving Vodafone due to signal issues and bundling through Telstra, which makes sense to pay one bill a month, he said the process was this;
This is so when you install a new sim card from another company the phone works, if you don’t unlock the phone, you can’t use it.
I’ll just say, I rung Vodafone and was put on hold for a fair while, which is standard for a lot of big companies these days and then said one sentence and got hung up on, so I flagged calling them back as Vodafone have shops in most of the shopping centre’s these days.
After this I went into the Vodafone store to get instructions on how to unlock phone and also to see how to take the number across to our new provider.
They were helpful in telling me the process there, I have to tell you they can’t unlock the phone at the shop for security reasons so you will have to do it at home on your computer.
You need your IMEI number, your security code and also after entering these numbers you will have to keep another password to enter into your phone to unlock once you have the new sim card installed.
The stage after this was very simple indeed, next door to the Vodafone store was the Telstra store, I walked in, sat down, told the guy there all the details, he proceeded to change them and add them to my Telstra account on the spot, authorization was given to port the number from me and this was processed, all was done in half an hour and all that was left to do was the above log on to Vodafone website to unlock the phone.
By the time I got home, logged on to Vodafone, entered my details to unlock with the new sim installed and unlocked the phone the number had been ported and the phone was working under a new provider on a new network.
So, the easiest way to transfer a number to a new phone provider is;
• Research your plan and new provider.
• Research how to unlock phone from current network if needed.
• Make sure you have authorisation to port the number across.
• Go and see your “New” provider.
• Get them to set up new account with number attached to it.
• Get the new phone sim card off them and install into your phone.
• Unlock phone off old network if needed.
• Wait for phone and new network to work.
• Call your number from another phone to check it’s your old number still.
• Make phonecalls and remember to pay your bills.
