Your provider won't release your number? Here's how to force it
Refusing to release your number is often a breach of Ofcom's General Condition C7 — you don't need your old provider's goodwill to leave. Your rights, the escalation steps, and the case NumberGroup took to Ofcom: a provider fined £20,000 for holding a customer's number hostage for over two years.
If your provider is refusing to release your phone number, or quietly letting the porting request rot, here is the short version: they are not allowed to do that, and you do not need their cooperation or goodwill to leave. The legal obligation to move your number sits with them, not you — and a regulator can make them honour it.
We know, because we forced exactly that outcome. Read on for your rights, the steps to escalate, and the case where a provider that held a customer’s number hostage for more than two years was fined by Ofcom.
Your number is yours to move
Number portability is not a favour your provider does you. It is a legal duty under Ofcom’s General Conditions. The relevant rule — General Condition C7 (it was numbered GC18 for years, and you will still see that reference around) — requires a provider to port your number to your new provider as soon as is reasonably practicable and in the shortest possible time, on reasonable terms.
That cuts through the most common excuse: “you have to clear your contract / settle the account / give us 90 days’ notice before we’ll release the number.” Billing disputes and the portability duty are separate things. You can owe a provider money and still have the right to take your number with you. The number moving and the money owed are two different conversations.
What to do if a provider blocks your port
- Make the request in writing, through the new provider. Porting is initiated by the provider you are moving to, not the one you are leaving. Give your new provider the numbers and let them raise the port. Keep your own dated record of when it started.
- Log every delay.Dates, names, what was promised, what didn’t happen. A timeline is what turns “they’re being difficult” into evidence of a breach.
- Raise a formal complaint with the old provider.Use the word “complaint” explicitly and ask for their complaints procedure.
- Escalate to Alternative Dispute Resolution.If it isn’t resolved within eight weeks, or you hit deadlock, take it to the provider’s ADR scheme (Ombudsman Services or CISAS). It’s free to you and their decision is binding on the provider.
- Report the conduct to Ofcom.Ofcom doesn’t settle individual cases, but it monitors reports and opens enforcement investigations into providers that show a pattern. Your report is a data point that can trigger one.
The case: a number held hostage for two years
This isn’t theory for us. A customer wanted to bring their number to NumberGroup, and their existing provider — GW Telecom, trading as Gateway Telecom — simply would not complete the port. We didn’t shrug and tell the customer it was out of our hands. We took it to Ofcom and pushed it all the way through the enforcement process.
In January 2018, Ofcom issued a Confirmation Decision finding that Gateway had contravened its number-portability obligations under General Condition 18 in various respects. The outcome:
- A £20,000 penalty for the breach.
- £1,000 compensation ordered for the affected customer.
- The number had been held up for more than two years before it was finally ported — and freeing it ultimately took Ofcom and several carriers working together, not the goodwill of the provider holding it.
We’re honest about that last point: we didn’t wave a wand and free the number on our own. We refused to let it go, we escalated it to the regulator, and the regulator made it happen and penalised the provider that had obstructed it. That is the difference between a provider who treats your number as your property and one who treats it as leverage.
Why providers do this
Holding a number is leverage. As long as your number is stuck, you can’t fully leave — your customers still ring the old line, so you stay, and you keep paying. For a provider whose value is built on a locked-in customer base, every number that can’t escape is part of the asset. That’s the quiet incentive behind the “we’ll release it once you’ve…” stalling.
It’s the same machinery behind the long contracts, the exit fees and the bundled finance deals — all the ways UK businesses get treated as a product to be locked in and sold, rather than a customer to be served.
How we do it instead
We hold our numbers directly as a UK carrier, and we don’t use them as a leash. Porting in to NumberGroup is free.And if you ever decide we’re not for you, we’ll port you back out for free — no exit fee, no notice period, no “retention offer” that suddenly appears the day you try to leave. Your number is yours. We just look after it while it’s with us.
That’s part of the flat £149/month Membership: numbers we hold directly, calls passed through at the wholesale rate BT charges (a regulated rate agreed by Ofcom — about 0.31p a minute to a UK landline), and a UK team that fights your corner instead of trapping you in it.
Move your phones to us. We'll save you money.
Memorable numbers, unlimited UK numbers, every smart feature and a UK team — all included with Membership at £149/mo. No contract.