Switching your phone service from Belgacom to OVH

I never thought I would write this post. I am truly amazed.

A few weeks ago, we decided to port our main phone line after 35 years from Belgacom to OVH VoIP service.

Now, the tricky thing was, the Internet line we have with EDPnet in the house is run via the same phone line. This worried me, thinking that I’d end up with my parents losing internet and phone and with me far away. But hey… let’s try it.

Just to make sure though, I called up Belgacom to ask them how these things normally go. After being on hold for 38 minutes in a seemingly endless queue, I decided to call OVH. A few seconds later, I was talking to someone explaining me the process, however with the disclaimer that the information is based on french operators. So I decided to give my internet provider, EDPnet, a call. There I was told that it will ‘just work’, Belgacom would terminate the line automatically, and they’ll step in with a ‘raw copper’ service. Sounds great!

So I scheduled the number port for the 21st of January. Letters arrived from OVH and Belgacom, verifying that I wanted to go ahead with this, and the 21st of January came closer.

On the day, I got 3 emails from OVH confirming every step of the number port. The phone service just switched over. Even internet didn’t disconnect. Everything went smoothly. Unbelievable right?

Next, I got a nice email from EDPnet confirming that they heard about the number port, and that they’ll provide the raw copper service on the same line without interruption.

Great! To be honest, I did NOT expect this to go smoothly at all. Given my past experiences with major telephony operators and complex setups like this (with 3 operators involved), I expected to loose my number, loose internet connectivity for at least a few months etc. But no. It all works. So I’d like to thank OVH, EDPnet and even Belgacom for making this a very smooth transition. Awesome work guys!