Porting from Rogers Wireless Home Phone

[Lilith2836]

Just an FYI based on my experience:

Porting a Rogers Wireless Home Phone number to PM was a bit more complicated than expected. Even though the Rogers Wireless Home Phone uses a sim card, it cannot receive text messages so the SMS port request confirmation will not work. It's basically a box with an antenna that a home phone handset plugs into.

I had thought (& hoped) that the number could be ported as a regular sim & tried to do this. It didn't work (due to the no text message thing) & I asked for help from the Moderator Team (Thanks Walter!!) to retry the port request. Because of the no text message problem, I contacted Rogers to try to manually confirm the request.

After going through the Rogers Live Chat & the usual Rogers agents on the phone, I ultimately had to call a completely separate phone number to verbally verify the port request confirmation. After that, the port happened fairly quickly & all is well.

Of note, the PM port request had already been done when I spoke to everyone at Rogers so they could see the request in my Rogers account even though the agents couldn't act on it.

So, if anyone needs to port a number from this type of device, it may be better to try to port it as a landline or call the Rogers Porting Centre directly.

Also, the IMEI for this type of device is on a sticker on the underside of the box

After all that, I have successfully ported to PM 🙂

Hope this helps someone!

Cheers!

Edit: The Rogers Porting Centre phone number is 1-877-327-8503

There is a short menu & then a wait (mine was short) to get to the agent. There's a bunch of security checks so recommend having your most recent bill ready

[Lilith2836]

Nuts!

Good to know it really doesn't work.

Hope your attempt didn't mess up your services

Cheers!

[Anonymous]

 @Lilith2836 : It's either deja vu or the SmartHub SIM did the same thing. The SIM is locked. I tried 1234 and 0000. 3 chances. 1 left. I'm out.

I seem to think I did something like this for fun some time ago. But it might have been the SmartHub SIM. I had ported that number out a while ago simply to close the service.

[Lilith2836]

Yes! That's the number

Sorry, didn't even think to actually include that phone number in the first post

[darlicious]

@Lilith2836 

Excellent post this will surely help others in the future. Thank you!

Edit:

Was this the porting department # for Rogers?     1-877-327-8503

If not would you mind supplying us with the number?   thx

[Anonymous]

 @Lilith2836 : Yeah I can't login to the WHP either. The SmartHub is basically like a router so that's easy enough to login to. Now you've got me curious about the WHP SIM in a phone. Maybe I'll play with that sooner than later just for curiosity.

[BlueB]

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@will13am wrote:

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No they won't.  The account is set up for calling only.  

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If that's true, then could you theoretically pull the SIM card into a cell phone and use it as a mobile phone? 

I never tested this, but initially thought it was set up as a "data" line and the phone would do VoIP over that data.  (If this is the case, can you pull the SIM into a cell phone and use it strictly for data?)  😄

[Lilith2836]

Oooo! Try it! If the Telus Wireless Home Phone can do SMS then porting & other functions would be much easier.

The Rogers Wireless Home Phone that I had didn't have any internet/data & I wasn't aware of any way of logging into it beyond seeing it listed in my billing account. But if I can use the PM sim in it & access the SMS I'll do it. What's the interface to access the Telus one? Would I need a Telus Smarthub?

[Anonymous]

The Telus Wireless Home Phone and the Telus SmartHub will both take the Public Mobile SIM and do calls and internet (SmartHub). I'll admit now that I never tried to log in to the devices to see any texts. But it's there in the interface. Maybe some day I might try it.

[Lilith2836]

I did try to put the home phone sim into 2 old cell phones & 1 newer phone but it didn't work. Gave me an error (MM#6) on the older phones & wouldn't connect to any network. The newer phone just said "unknown network" & did nothing. One of the older phones was a Rogers branded phone so I thought it would work but no go. The other 2 were factory unlocked phones that I had previously used on the Rogers network (same account too)

I haven't tried putting another sim into the home phone box. I suppose I could try with the PM sim but I'd miss all the SMS about payments & things

[will13am]

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@benfatto wrote:

@Lilith2836  Too late to check but I wonder if those wireless home phone SIMs can receive SMS when installed in cell phone. 
Vaguely recall a post saying the inverse works; regular cell phone SIM in wireless home phone adapter. 

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No they won't.  The account is set up for calling only.  

[benfatto]

@Lilith2836  Too late to check but I wonder if those wireless home phone SIMs can receive SMS when installed in cell phone. 
Vaguely recall a post saying the inverse works; regular cell phone SIM in wireless home phone adapter.