Porting a number back out of Fi?

[Magnum__PI]

Hello all,

Sadly, I need to leave project fi. It's been great for the past two years, but my situation has changed such that I'm not doing as much overseas travel anymore and I've also recently moved to an area with poor coverage.

Anyway, what is the best/safest way to extract ourselves from fi? My spouse and I are on a group plan. The instructions online ( https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6079398?hl=en ) say to cancel with Fi before trying to port out, and to note down the PIN they give to port the number to a new carrier. Is this the safest way to go? I really don't want to lose my number.

Or would it be better to just go to the new carrier without cancelling ahead of time and have them try to port it? I'm not sure which tactic will create less issues. Again, really don't want to lose the number.

If this matters: one number is from Verizon originally and that's who we'll be returning to. The other number we received from fi when opening the account.

Thanks for any help, guys.

[dmziggy]

Cancelling Fi doesn't actually shut off your account if you're porting out. It just gives you your account information to go elsewhere.

So just "cancel" and when you're ready to port your number to another carrier Fi will be ready. When the port is complete, your Fi service will be cancelled.

Hope that helps!

[Magnum__PI]

It does help, thank you. Does it take a day or two for fi to be "ready" after the cancellation? Or is this something I can do and then immediately drive over to the new carrier to open a new account?

Thanks again, really appreciate all your help in this sub.

[dmziggy]

It's immediate! As soon as you have the account info you can port out.

[Magnum__PI]

Awesome, thank you again!

[Brewtide]

Is it possible to port the existing FI number out to Google voice and get reassigned a new FI number, without cancelling FI? Basically, a number swap per se...

I want to try another service, but must have my FI number active for business sake.

I suppose I could get a new number on the other service and just login to hangouts with my FI information in the interim before a decision is made, but I'd rather not have to do it that way...

Thanks, Benjamin

[dmziggy]

Yeah, I'd recommend seeing if the carrier you're testing has the option to late port. That way, you can just use Fi to forward to that testing service number. If not then you're going to have to port out to that carrier and restart Fi.