Phone number

[Oleanda]

If you move house to another part of the country, can you still take your phone mumber with you?

[hopalong]

No.  You will need the area code for that part of the country

[Buenchico]

It's not impossible but it's complicated (and expensive). The first thing that you'd probably need to do is to pay for a new line to be connected to your old house. (Many houses actually have 2 lines pre-connected anyway. I only found this out when I wanted a separate business line for my home. I was told that all houses on this 1970's estate had 2 lines provided when they were constructed). This is so that you leave a valid line for the new occupier (which will be important if the house was sold 'with all services connected').

Then you will have to pay to have the physical connection to your old line removed from your old house (while still keeping the account alive).

The next stage is to pay for the provision of a re-direction service from the old number to the 'real' number at your new location.

All of the above is possible but there are set-up fees involved and, more importantly, you'll also have to pay for each re-directed call (at full national rate plus a surcharge) every time someone phones your old number.

The only reason, which I can think of, that somebody might want to do all of this, is if they were running a business from home and wanted a short term redirection service until they could notify their customers of the new number.

Chris

[Buenchico]

Just a PS:
Both Hopalong's answer and my own assume either that you're with BT or that you're with an alternative provider which let you keep a BT number. Some other companies use non-geographic telephone numbers so it might be possible to transfer a phone number from one part of the country to another if you happen to be with one of these service suppliers.

Chris

[Oleanda]

Thank you. I wasn't really contemplating taking my number with me, partly because the area code where I'm going is only one digit different from where I am now and it could cause a lot of confusion. I was only asking out of curiosity really because I know a lot of people who move locally do take their numbers with them.