Reading (For Dummies)

Amazon.com and AT&T Number Portability: The Missing Manual

I recently ordered a new phone with an AT&T contract from Amazon. It was especially intriguing after James' post on the topic of one-way roaming agreements. Indeed, my phone has already roamed over to T-Mobile's network both in Syracuse and New Jersey, seemlessly, and my T-Mobile phone couldn't connect to the AT&T towers in either place.

Anyway, according to the Amazon number portability page, you can't transfer your old number to ATT. This is, however, not the case. Reading the instructions for the other providers pretty much says, buy the phone, and when it arrives call your new cell provider to have them move the old number. I called AT&T ahead of time to see if that would work (called them 3 separate times just to be sure everyone was in agreement ;-)). It was.

So when I got my new phone, I called their number switching number available at the ATT Wireless local number portability site. After waiting 25 minutes on hold, I was told that I called the wrong number, and I was transferred to the sales department (where my call was answer immediately). I gave them my old phone number, my old account number, old billing address, and current address (which happen to be the same). Four hours later, my new v600 got a text message saying "315-395-0160 Number Transfer complete. Welcome to AT&T Wireless." A quick call to my brother and a callback from him verified this to be the case.

So buy your cheap new phone from Amazon, the mony savings are well worth it. And be sure to get a quad band phone so you can roam on all those local network's towers...oh, and avoid T-mobile -- while their customer service kicks ass, they don't get anything like the signal from ATT or Cingular...