It comes down to one thing, and it is not the wording of your marketing contract. Whose name is on the phone account decides it. The federal porting rules run between phone companies and the end user customer they bill, and if your marketing company opened that account, that customer is them.
The porting rules protect a phone company’s customer, not you
The duty starts in the statute. 47 U.S.C. 251(b)(2) gives every local exchange carrier “the duty to provide, to the extent technically feasible, number portability in accordance with requirements prescribed by the Commission.” Those requirements sit in 47 CFR Part 52, Subpart C.
Part 52 says who is covered. Section 52.21(m) defines number portability as “the ability of users of telecommunications services to retain, at the same location, existing telecommunications numbers without impairment of quality, reliability, or convenience when switching from one telecommunications carrier to another.”
Read that slowly. A user of a phone service. Switching carriers. At the same location. A marketing agency is not a phone company, and nothing in Subpart C sets terms for the deal between you and one.
The closest the rules get is section 52.34(b), which says an interconnected VoIP or VRS or IP Relay provider “may not enter into any agreement that would prohibit an end-user customer or a Registered Internet-based TRS User from porting between interconnected VoIP or VRS or IP Relay providers, or to or from a telecommunications carrier.” That protection points at the phone provider. It does not point at the company renting you numbers the provider issued to them.
This is not legal advice and it is not tax advice. A fight over a number sitting in somebody else’s account is a contract matter, and contracts are read differently from state to state, so take the paperwork to an attorney licensed where you work rather than to the FCC.
Fourteen fields, and one of them ends the argument
47 CFR 52.36 says a telecommunications carrier “may require only” a set list of data to accomplish a simple port order request. There are fourteen required fields, plus one optional passcode field. You can open the rule and count them.
The second one on the list is the account number. The Commission’s order adopting these fields, published at 75 FR 35305 on June 22, 2010, describes it plainly: the field “identifies the account number assigned by the current service provider.”
That single field is the whole dispute. If the tracking numbers were set up by your marketing company under their own name, you do not have that account number, and the carrier has no reason to hand it to you. No amount of arguing about who paid the invoice changes what the port order needs.
The fourteenth field is worth reading too, since the name invites a wrong guess. The same 2010 order describes Agency Authority Status as a field that “indicates that the customer is acting as an end user’s agent and has an authorization on file,” and the order explains that it requires the new service provider to acknowledge that it is acting as the customer’s agent. It is a check box filled in by the phone company you are moving to, not a rule about what your marketing company may hold for you.
So two setups look identical on a monthly bill. In one, the account is in your name. In the other, it is in theirs. Ask which one you are in, in writing, before you give notice.
What the rules say about timing
Under 47 CFR 52.35(a), carriers must complete a simple wireline-to-wireline or simple intermodal port request within one business day, unless a longer period is requested by the new provider or by the customer. An accurate and complete request has to reach the current service provider between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. local time to be eligible for activation at midnight the same day. Section 52.35(d) gives four business days for a non-simple port. Section 52.35(b) required small providers to comply by February 2, 2011, so this is old, settled ground.
The FCC’s consumer guide “Porting: Keeping Your Phone Number When You Change Providers” carries a Date Last Updated/Reviewed of December 10, 2025. It gives owners the line they most want to hear: “Once you request service from a new company, your old company cannot refuse to port your number, even if you owe money for an outstanding balance or termination fee.” It also tells you to contact the new company to start the process, not the old one.
Now the honest limits, from that same page. “If you are moving to a new geographic area, you may not be able to keep your current phone number when changing providers.” Some rural wireline service providers may obtain waivers for the porting requirement from state authorities, and their customers may be unable to port a number to a new provider at all. The page sends anyone in that position to their own state public utilities commission.
The bigger limit is one no sales call mentions. That one business day clock runs between two carriers. It does not start when you email your marketing company asking for your numbers. A company sitting on that email for three weeks is not breaking any FCC rule.
An 800 number sits under different rules
The fourteen fields and the one business day clock all sit in Subpart C. Toll free numbers are administered under Subpart D of the same part, which carries its own definitions and its own clocks.
Two of those definitions matter here. Section 52.101(e) defines a toll free subscriber as “the entity that has been assigned a toll free number.” Section 52.101(b) defines a Responsible Organization as “the entity chosen by a toll free subscriber to manage and administer the appropriate records in the toll free Service Management System for the toll free subscriber.”
The rule puts that choice with the subscriber. So the question underneath is the same one it was a minute ago. Who is on file as the subscriber.
There is a clock here too. Section 52.103(d) says toll free numbers must remain in disconnect status, or a combination of disconnect and transitional status, “for no less than 45 days and for no more than 4 months,” and must then go directly into the spare or unavailable category. A number in spare status is available for assignment to somebody else. A toll free number that gets cancelled instead of handed over is gone inside a few months.
None of that is legal advice either. If a number printed on your trucks is sitting in another company’s account, it is worth an hour with an attorney in your own state while that clock is still running.
Sometimes the right move is to let it go
If a tracking number only ever appeared on a landing page and inside an ads account, no customer has it written on a fridge. Spending two weeks and a lawyer’s hour to rescue it is a bad trade. Get a fresh number, put it live, and move on.
Fight for it when the number is on your vans, your invoices, your yard signs, or your Google Business Profile, where a tracking number raises a second question of its own. That is a number your repeat customers already dial. Getting the listing itself back is its own fight, covered in why your marketing company will not hand it over.
One more plain limit. No website company can port a number for you. Under the rules the port runs between phone companies, and the provider you are moving to files the request. What a build can do is keep your real number on pages you control, in accounts you hold, which is the shape of the work described here.
What to do next
- Ask in writing today for three things: which company supplies the tracking numbers, whose name the account is in, and the account number. Email, not a phone call, so the answer is on paper.
- Ask for copies of the paperwork behind the numbers, including anything you signed when the account was opened.
- If the account turns out to be yours, contact the new provider you want and let them start the port. That is the order the FCC guide describes.
- If the account turns out to be theirs, stop treating it as a phone problem. It is a contract problem for an attorney in your own state.
- Check what is printed on your trucks and invoices. A number on physical property should never sit in another company’s account.
- Read 47 CFR 52.35 and 52.36 yourself on eCFR. They are free and they are short.
The same question decides your domain, your hosting and your listing, and it is worth running those checks in the same week. Getting out cleanly has its own traps, covered in how to cancel a website contract that renews itself.