Telkom has to make an appointment to visit your offices and remove the PRI interface from your premises for the port to take effect. This can delay the porting process.
A PRI is simply a line offered by Telkom that gives you 30 channels (voice line) instead of one. They are generally packaged with a set of 30 numbers that can be used for marketing purposes or direct dialling to each employee.
Any number that is not ported will result in the infrastructure being cancelled and the remainder of the range being lost and non-recoverable. E.g. A customer cannot port 250 of its 300 PRI numbers now and request to port the remaining 50 numbers two weeks later. Upon completing the port request, the customer forgoes these numbers and has no right to them anymore.
If you are under contract term for the PRI, Telkom will not allow you to cancel it. You may port the numbers; however, you will still have to pay Telkom for the remainder of the contract term.
NB - The costs involved in porting a PRI number differ from those of a standard port, as the port of a PRI number is managed (i.e., a Telkom technician has to come onsite to port the numbers). The cost to port PRI number/s is a block fee of R750.00 excl VAT and an additional R65.00 excl VAT per number.
Individual numbers may be ported from a PRI.