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Number portability requirements checklist by country

See the document a country asks for to port a number out, how long it should take, and whose page that came from.

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Only the countries with a sourced regulator or vendor page are listed, each dated below.

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Result

United States: 1 document needed

United States asks for 1 document to port a number out. See the checklist below for what to have ready, and how it is sourced.

  • Reference

    Letter of Authorization (LOA)

    The name and address on the LOA must match what the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record (CSR) shows, exactly - not what you believe your account says. A wholesale carrier may not ask for the LOA up front, but the national rule still expects you to be able to produce it on demand if asked.

  • Warning

    The most common cause of a rejected port

    The single most common reason a US port is rejected is the LOA's address not matching the address on the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record - not a missing signature or a wrong account number.

    Call the losing carrier, ask for the exact name and address its Customer Service Record has on file, and make the LOA match that character-for-character before you submit the port.

  • Info

    How long the source says it should take

    A simple wireline-to-wireline or intermodal port completes within one business day: an accurate request received 8am-1pm local time activates at midnight that night; after 1pm it is treated as received the next business day at 8am.

  • Info

    Carriers can ask for more than this within the same country

    This is the national rule, not any one carrier's own form: a carrier can require more than the regulator sets, and a wholesale carrier may ask for less paperwork up front while still expecting you to produce it on demand later - which the US source above says explicitly.

  • Info

    Sourced from United States's own regulator

    Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, reproducing the FCC's rule is the regulator, or a page that directly attributes it, read 2026-10-13.

CountryDocuments (or check) neededTimingSource
United States
Letter of Authorization (LOA)
A simple wireline-to-wireline or intermodal port completes within one business day: an accurate request received 8am-1pm local time activates at midnight that night; after 1pm it is treated as received the next business day at 8am.
Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, reproducing the FCC's rule - checked 13 October 2026

Carriers within this country can ask for more than this; this is the national floor, not any one carrier’s own form.

  • This is a dated reference, checked on the day shown per row, not a live check against a regulator or a carrier - rules and intervals change.
  • This is the national rule, not your own carrier's form: a carrier can legally ask for more than this, never less.
  • This cannot tell you whether a specific number is portable; that depends on your account status with your current carrier, which this tool has no way to see.

What this is

This number porting requirements by country checklist names the one document - or, for an Australian mobile number, the identity check that replaces it - a regulator or a vendor guide says is needed to port a number out, and how long that source says the process should take, read and dated so you can see how fresh the answer is.

Porting a number means proving two things to the carrier you are leaving: that you are who you say you are, and that the number is really yours to take. What counts as proof differs sharply by country. The US asks the gaining carrier to match a Letter of Authorization (LOA) to the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record; the UK instead issues a short code - a PAC - that plays the same role an LOA plays elsewhere; an Australian mobile port asks for no document at all, just a call, a callback or an SMS code to prove who you are.

Timing is just as uneven. Some sources publish a fixed deadline the losing provider must hit (the US's one business day, the UK's two working hours or ten working days depending on how many numbers move at once); others publish only a percentile target (Australia's 90%-within-3-hours); and one of the seven countries below, Germany, has no regulator-set interval at all - only a vendor's own estimate exists, and this checklist says so rather than inventing one.

How to read the result

Pick a country, and - only where it changes the answer - a line type or a number count. The checklist itself always comes first, whatever else the result also says: each document or check gets its own line to tick off, ahead of the timing the source publishes and, when one source names it, the single mistake most likely to get the port rejected.

The result always closes with two findings, in this order: that a carrier can legally ask for more than the national rule, then who published the answer and when. A row backed by the regulator itself is marked as such; a row backed by a vendor guide instead - because the regulator does not publish a document checklist of its own - is marked that way too, in the finding and in the Source column's own link and date.

A ported number still has to clear the sender-name and A2P checks on its own once it lands; see sending an SMS that arrives for segment pricing, sender-name rules and A2P throughput, in the order they actually bite.

Common mistakes

What goes wrong most often, and how to tell.

  • Assuming one Letter of Authorization works everywhereA US LOA only clears the port if its address matches the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record exactly; the UK does not use an LOA at all, only a PAC; Germany's own vendor guide wants a dated LOA plus a recent phone bill, and more again for a toll-free number. A document built for one country is routinely rejected in another.
  • Treating a wholesale carrier's lighter ask as the real ruleA wholesale carrier may not demand the LOA up front, but the underlying national rule still expects you to produce it on request - skipping it because nobody asked yet only moves the rejection to a later step, once someone finally does.
  • Expecting an Australian mobile port to ask for a document at allAn Australian mobile port is verified by a call, a callback or an SMS code, not by a Letter of Authorization - bringing one wastes a step the process does not have. The fixed-line case is different again: this source names no document and no replacement check for it at all.

Questions

What people ask about this tool.

  • It depends entirely on the country: a Letter of Authorization matching the losing carrier’s Customer Service Record in the US, a PAC from your current provider in the UK, and no document at all for an Australian mobile number, which uses an identity check instead. Pick a country above to see the specific one, dated to when it was last checked.

  • It varies by country and sometimes by how many numbers move at once: one business day for a simple US port, two working hours or ten working days in the UK depending on whether 26 or more numbers are involved, and no regulator-set interval at all in Germany, where only a vendor’s own estimate of up to two weeks exists.

  • No. A carrier can legally ask for more than its country’s regulator requires, and even a wholesale carrier that skips the paperwork at signup still expects you to be able to produce it if asked later, so always check the specific carrier’s own process before you start.

  • Because its regulator's own rule verifies identity a different way: a call to your handset while you are in-store, a callback to the number, or an SMS code, with a document used only if none of those three can be completed. A local or fixed-line port is different again, and this source names no document for that case either.

  • It is a dated reference, not a live feed: each row carries the day its source was actually read, and rules and intervals do change after that date. Treat this as a starting checklist to confirm with the carrier actually doing the port, not as the current word of the regulator.

Sources

Every fixed value here comes from the provider’s own documentation. These pages change, so each says the day it was last read.

Use it from the API

The same check, as one request.

Request
curl -X POST https://resellerhq.com/api/tools/number-portability-checklist \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"country":"US"}'
Response
{
  "tool": "number-portability-checklist",
  "input": {
    "country": "US",
    "lineType": "mobile",
    "numberCount": 1
  },
  "result": {
    "verdict": {
      "tone": "warning",
      "headline": "United States: 1 document needed",
      "summary": "United States asks for 1 document to port a number out. See the checklist below for what to have ready, and how it is sourced."
    },
    "findings": [
      {
        "id": "document-1",
        "severity": "reference",
        "title": "Letter of Authorization (LOA)",
        "detail": "The name and address on the LOA must match what the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record (CSR) shows, exactly - not what you believe your account says. A wholesale carrier may not ask for the LOA up front, but the national rule still expects you to be able to produce it on demand if asked.",
        "pinned": true
      },
      {
        "id": "rejection-risk",
        "severity": "warn",
        "title": "The most common cause of a rejected port",
        "detail": "The single most common reason a US port is rejected is the LOA's address not matching the address on the losing carrier's own Customer Service Record - not a missing signature or a wrong account number.",
        "fix": "Call the losing carrier, ask for the exact name and address its Customer Service Record has on file, and make the LOA match that character-for-character before you submit the port."
      },
      {
        "id": "timing",
        "severity": "info",
        "title": "How long the source says it should take",
        "detail": "A simple wireline-to-wireline or intermodal port completes within one business day: an accurate request received 8am-1pm local time activates at midnight that night; after 1pm it is treated as received the next business day at 8am."
      },
      {
        "id": "carrier-varies",
        "severity": "info",
        "title": "Carriers can ask for more than this within the same country",
        "detail": "This is the national rule, not any one carrier's own form: a carrier can require more than the regulator sets, and a wholesale carrier may ask for less paperwork up front while still expecting you to produce it on demand later - which the US source above says explicitly."
      },
      {
        "id": "source-is-regulator",
        "severity": "info",
        "title": "Sourced from United States's own regulator",
        "detail": "Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, reproducing the FCC's rule is the regulator, or a page that directly attributes it, read 2026-10-13."
      }
    ],
    "parts": [
      {
        "kind": "table",
        "columns": [
          "Country",
          "Documents (or check) needed",
          "Timing"
        ],
        "rows": [
          [
            "United States",
            "Letter of Authorization (LOA)",
            "A simple wireline-to-wireline or intermodal port completes within one business day: an accurate request received 8am-1pm local time activates at midnight that night; after 1pm it is treated as received the next business day at 8am."
          ]
        ],
        "rowSources": [
          {
            "label": "47 CFR § 52.35 - Porting Intervals",
            "publisher": "Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, reproducing the FCC's rule",
            "href": "https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/52.35",
            "read": "2026-10-13"
          }
        ],
        "proseColumns": [
          1,
          2
        ],
        "note": "Carriers within this country can ask for more than this; this is the national floor, not any one carrier’s own form."
      }
    ],
    "limits": [
      "This is a dated reference, checked on the day shown per row, not a live check against a regulator or a carrier - rules and intervals change.",
      "This is the national rule, not your own carrier's form: a carrier can legally ask for more than this, never less.",
      "This cannot tell you whether a specific number is portable; that depends on your account status with your current carrier, which this tool has no way to see."
    ]
  }
}

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