new line, then port?

[manhattanmania]

soo as much as verizon completely wipes the floor with att (at least in the nyc metro area) i'm hoping that because the new iphone is plastic/3g or because an act of god occurred, att's service will be something i can deal with.

question: i am not going to port my number over from verizon and pay a cancellation fee without trying ATT out again on the new iphone for myself. does anyone know if i can open a new line of service with a different number and if i decide to keep the iphone, port my number over and placed on that contract? or would i have to cancel the original att contract and pay prorated charges and then port my number over separately?

 

[sbornia]

I've been thinking about doing the same thing but with Sprint. Used to have ATT, but the reception was terrible from my home office. Am willing to switch back if it's better now.

So I'll second the OP's question: has anyone ported an old number over within the trial period of using their new line?

 

[mcnieman]

this is actually exactly what we did last night at att, moving over from sprint. Porting can be done at a later date (obviously before you cancel your service with the other provider)

 

[sbornia]

this is actually exactly what we did last night at att, moving over from sprint. Porting can be done at a later date (obviously before you cancel your service with the other provider)

Could you describe the process a bit? I'm wondering if it was as simple as calling ATT and instructing them to port the old number, which, in turn, causes the old account to be canceled automatically.

 

[mcnieman]

You can do it that way.

Basically, last night we went to AT&T to ask a couple questions prior to the iphone launch. The rep recommended we just sign up now with a couple of free phones and exchange them out next friday. We did this, and since we we are supposively under contract with Sprint we knew we'd pay an early termination fee, which was fine. They did the port electronically... and we had an issue with retentions from sprint interfering and basically telling us that our contract date was wrong and she would change it from 11/09 to August 2nd of this year. So we decided to wait it out a month to avoid the $400 ETF. Anyways, we still went ahead and signed up on 'temporary' lines for the time being, and specifically made sure that they can be ported at a later date which we plan to do august 3rd.