Number porting is not a two week task, and it is not yours to schedule

Every voice project has one dependency you cannot compress, and it is not the configuration. It is the carrier. Numbers move on their schedule, and no amount of project management makes a regulated telecom process go faster.

The actual windows

There is no single headline figure, which is the first thing worth knowing. Aircall publishes requirements country by country and the spread is wide:

• Chile, around 8 days.
• Belgium and Croatia, around 10 days.
• Czech Republic, around 12 days.
• Canada, Spain and Switzerland, up to 15 days.
• Austria, two to three weeks.
• Australia, up to six weeks.

For the US and Canada, Aircall's own guidance is 10 to 15 business days from a signed letter of authorisation.

Countries also split by port type. Australia has simple and complex categories. The UK and Spain split single-line from multi-line. Which one you are in changes the timeline.

These are ranges, not commitments, and they assume your paperwork is right first time.

Most delays are not the carrier being slow

They are rejected requests. The account holder name does not match. The service address is stale. The losing carrier has a PIN requirement nobody knew about. Every rejection restarts the clock.

Getting the paperwork right is the single highest-leverage thing you can do, and it happens before any configuration work starts.

Sequence so porting is not the blocker

• Submit the port with verified account details in week one, before design decisions are finished.
• Build call flows against temporary numbers so behaviour is proven before cutover.
• Wire call logging into the helpdesk early, because that is where reporting gaps surface.
• Keep the old system reachable through the cutover window rather than switching on a single evening.

What moves and what gets rebuilt

Numbers port. Call recordings and history live on the Aircall account rather than the carrier and come out through the API, with six months of retention.

One correction worth noting, because we had this wrong ourselves: call flows do not always have to be rebuilt. Aircall now documents importing a Smartflows call distribution to another number, including the full configuration. Tags, macros and automation logic across systems still rarely map one to one, so the mapping document still gets written and approved before anything moves.

The one thing to tell your stakeholders

Give them the range for your specific country, name the owner, which is the carrier, and show the parallel plan. A go-live date built on a two week assumption when your carrier needs six is not an aggressive plan. It is a missed date with extra steps.

Verified against

• Aircall support, number porting requirements by country.
• Aircall support, US porting requests and porting FAQ.
• Aircall support, importing a Smartflows call distribution to another number.
• Aircall support, accessing and exporting call data and recordings.

Checked against Aircall documentation on August 6, 2026.