[generalpf]

Not sure where you live but in Canada and the USA the phone companies legally have to allow you to port your existing number over from one company to another.

[ipcress_file]

You can port your number between providers here in Canada too. I even ported my old landline over to VOIP.

[Kwpolska]

Was that true in the 90s, when Netscape and ISP email addresses were in use?

[dlandau]

I remember porting numbers becoming a thing and I was born in 1989 so it must have been late 90s earliest. In Finland though, so don't know about north america