Gone are the days when it was possible to guess the origin of a car by the county number on its license plate. Similarly, it will be more difficult to guess the location of the caller on the phone by the code of his number alone.
It is indeed the end of the division of metropolitan France into five major geographical regions with telephone numbers starting with 01, 02, 03, 04 or 05. Since 1er January, a subscriber can keep his fixed telephone number even if he changes zone.
With this “de-geography”, a resident of Bordeaux – whose telephone number begins with 05 – who moves to Lorient (zone 02) will be able to keep his fixed telephone number. A new subscriber, this time living in Lorient, can also ask his operator, if he wishes, that his number does not start with 02. On the other hand, landline numbers in Overseas Territories remain specific to each territory.
“An economic challenge for companies”
This portability of fixed numbers has been made possible by the generalization of voice over IP (VoIP), which has lifted these geographical constraints. For Arcep, this development “responds above all to a practical need for individuals and an economic challenge for companies”.
This is for the telecoms regulatory authority to respond to the desire of individuals to keep their fixed telephone number, knowing that about half of the moves are made by changing the basic numbering zone (ZNE).
The demand was even more pressing on the part of companies, which communicated for years on a telephone number and suddenly had to change it following the transfer of its head office to a different municipality.
RIO responds 24 hours a day
In practice, landline number portability is relatively straightforward. Before subscribing to a new subscription, the holder of the number dials 3179, from the fixed line concerned, to obtain the RIO (operator identity statement). Either a unique identifier of 12 characters (letters and numbers) that you just have to communicate to the new operator who takes care of doing the necessary.
Beyond this voice server, available 24/7, each operator offers a free number to trigger the sending of this RIO by SMS or email. The new operator takes care of both keeping the fixed telephone number and terminating the services associated with this line. “It is possible to wear a number up to 40 calendar days after the termination of the contract”, specifies Arcep.
This RIO is not mandatory for companies, with the exception of “small professional” type offers (craftsman, merchant, self-employed, etc.) whose characteristics are similar to general public subscriptions.
A company has the possibility of requesting the portability of a subset of its numbers, while keeping the rest of the fixed numbers with its former operator. In both cases, the contract manager must approach the operators concerned.
In the event of a problem in the implementation of fixed portability, the subscriber must contact the customer service of his new operator. He can invoke article L.44 of the Postal and Electronic Communications Code, which specifies that “any delay or abuse in the provision of number retention gives rise to compensation for the subscriber”.