What's involved in taking my number to a new phone and a new provider?

April 18, 2022 10:23 AM

Help! I'm getting a new phone, switching to a new provider, and keeping my old number. What kind of information do I need, and how long with it take? Mid-April snowflakes within.

This weekend my wife and I started the process of upgrading our iPhone XRs to iPhone 13 Pros. We're both on month-to-month plans, she on Boost, me on Cricket, so we couldn't buy the phones in-store on the Apple Card no-interest payment plan (they require you to activate at least one line with one of the major carriers -- weird).

Anyway, the helpful Apple sales clerk helped us place an online order to be picked up at another store, which we'll be doing tonight. Then we'll go to a Boost store, update the SIM in her phone and get my number transferred from Cricket to Boost. We need to get new SIMs anyway because of 5G. After getting numbers transferred/set up, we'll take our old phones back to Apple for trade in (we have two weeks from when we pick up our phones to bring the old ones in).

My question is, how likely is switching from Cricket to Boost take? Can I walk into the Boost store, have them setup the account and give me a new SIM, and walk out with a new Boost SIM in my new phone with the same number? What kind of information is Boost going to need to make this happen? And if there's a delay, will I be able to use the old 4G SIM in the new phone, or will I need to use it in the old phone until the transition happens? Is there anything I'm missing? The last time I bought a phone, all I had to do was get a new SIM from Cricket, but 5G and switching carriers is a bit scary.

posted by lhauser to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

I've not done this with the two carriers you name, but it should be fairly straight-forward. The process is called "porting." You'll want to talk to the carrier you're moving to and they should hopefully be able to handle things without too much trouble.
posted by Alensin at 10:36 AM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Good luck!

Keeping a number seems like it should be no big deal, but it sure seems to be...
Also no experience with iPhones, nor these carriers. Please report back as to how it goes.
posted by Windopaene at 10:56 AM on April 18, 2022

Best answer: This was years ago, but I tried to move a number from a prepaid carrier to a post-paid account and they were not able to do it with just a phone number. I think they wanted the actual account number. I would be prepared with as much info you can get about your current set up with Cricket to be able to provide to Boost.
posted by soelo at 11:04 AM on April 18, 2022 [1 favorite]

Best answer: This has gotten easier with prepaid over the years, in my experience, but I've always done the component parts on my own (with Ting/Mint/Page Plus) rather than through a store. The process of transferring your number to a new carrier is called porting and you will typically need certain information about your old account to give your new carrier in order to complete the port. There's information about how to get this for Cricket here.

Honestly if it were me and I got any sense that the sales clerk at Boost wasn't totally experienced with this process I'd try to do one component at a time so it's easier to troubleshoot if something goes wrong. If your current phone is already unlocked and compatible with Boost I might try switching the old phone to Boost first because porting the phone number between carriers is probably the trickier part.
posted by needs more cowbell at 11:28 AM on April 18, 2022 [2 favorites]

The sales clerk at your new provider is able to research porting your number. The new provider's website might be able to answer that question too.

this is from Boost's site

a couple of articles specifically about Boost
1
2
posted by dlwr300 at 9:47 AM on April 19, 2022

Response by poster: The deed is done, and it was surprisingly easy. I went into the store with my Cricket account number, old phone and account PIN. The clerk knew exactly what to do, and it took about 15 minutes after doing money portion of the transaction to get the welcome text from Boost. He told me he’s not allowed to let me leave without knowing the port went through. Another 15 minutes before my first month’s subscription was applied, and I was in business. I’ll be setting up the new phone and putting the SIM in it later this evening.

Thanks for everyone’s advice!
posted by lhauser at 8:03 PM on April 19, 2022 [2 favorites]