You can cancel a phone number on your SIP trunk yourself, at any time, from the client area. This article explains what cancelling actually does, when it takes effect, and how long you have to change your mind.
What cancelling a number does
Cancelling does two separate things, and they do not happen at the same time.
- Straight away: the number is taken off your trunk. It stops ringing your phones immediately, and any SMS and 911 settings on it are removed.
- After 7 days: we hand the number back to the carrier it came from. At that point it leaves our control and is normally gone for good.
The gap between those two steps is deliberate. It is there so that a number cancelled by mistake can still be recovered.
How to cancel a number
- Sign in at portal.incentre.net.
- Open your SIP Trunk service.
- Choose List DIDs / DID operations from the menu on the left.
- Find the number in the table and click Cancel on that row.
- Confirm when you are asked.
This is the same process whether you ordered the number from us or ported it in from another provider.
When it takes effect
- Immediately. The number stops ringing your phones. Anyone who calls it hears a recorded message telling them the number is not in service.
- For the next 7 days. Callers keep hearing that message. The number is still ours during this period, so it can be put back.
- After 7 days. The number is released back to the carrier. Callers will get whatever the carrier does with it from that point, and we can no longer restore it.
If you cancelled a number by mistake
Contact us within 7 days and we can get it back. Call us or open a ticket, tell us the number, and we will stop it being released and put it back on your trunk.
Two things worth knowing:
- There is no undo button in the client area. Recovering a cancelled number is something we do for you, so you do need to contact us rather than doing it yourself.
- Restoring a number is not automatic even inside the 7 days. It stops ringing the moment you cancel, and it starts working again once we put it back, not before.
After the 7 days have passed the number has gone back to the carrier. We can try to order it again, but we cannot promise it will still be available, and it may already have been reissued to somebody else.
Numbers you ported in to us
If you brought a number to us from another provider and you want to move it somewhere else, do not cancel it. Ask your new provider to port it, and they will contact us to arrange the transfer. The number stays working the whole time.
Cancelling a ported number releases it to the carrier instead, and once that has happened it usually cannot be ported anywhere. If you are not sure which one you want, contact us first and we will tell you.
Numbers that are still being ported in
If a port has not finished yet, the number is not on your trunk and there is nothing to cancel in the client area. To stop a port that is still in progress, contact us and we will cancel the port order with the carrier.
Billing
A number is billed for the month in which you cancel it, and comes off your bill from the following month. Cancelling part way through a month does not produce a partial refund for that month.
If it is the only number on the trunk
The Cancel button cannot remove the last remaining number from a trunk. If you try, the page will look like it worked but the number will still be listed. If you want to remove your final number, or close the trunk altogether, contact us and we will take care of it.
Need help
Open a ticket from the client area or email support@incentre.com. If you are cancelling several numbers at once, or you are not certain whether a number should be cancelled or ported, ask us first. Cancelling is easy to reverse for 7 days and difficult to reverse afterwards.