Dallas-Fort Worth, TX
How do I move my DFW office from landlines to VoIP?
Move in this order: list every number your office pays for, test the internet, choose a provider, port the numbers with clean paperwork, build call routing and train staff before cutover, then keep the old lines until every number has moved. For a small DFW office, the slowest part is usually waiting on carriers, not the technology.
Book a DemoUpdated October 2026 · Cleod9 Voice, Arlington, TX
Inventory first
List every line on every bill, including fax, alarm, elevator and toll-free numbers, before you pick a provider.
Quality over speed
One call needs about 100 Kbps each way. Latency, jitter and packet loss decide whether calls sound clean.
Numbers come along
Existing numbers port with a letter of authorization and a recent bill that match the current carrier’s records exactly.
Cancel last
Run old and new service in parallel. Canceling a line before its port completes releases the number.
Eight steps, in an order that protects your numbers
Moving an office off landlines is not technically hard. It is unforgiving about order. Most of the trouble in these projects comes from doing the right things in the wrong sequence: a line gets canceled before its number has moved, a fax number nobody listed stops receiving referrals, or the new phones go live before anyone has decided where a call should ring at 12:15 on a Tuesday.
The order that works: inventory every line, check the internet, choose a provider, port the numbers, build the call routing, train the staff, cut over, and keep the old service for a short overlap. Steps one through three are homework you can start this week. Steps four through eight run on a calendar the carriers partly control, which is why the homework matters.
The sequence holds whether the office is a single suite with a handful of lines or a firm spread across two or three locations. A larger office has more lines to list, more accounts to port and more routing to decide, but the order does not change.
Step 1: Inventory every line on every bill
Pull the most recent full bill from every carrier the office pays, including the account a former office manager opened years ago that nobody has looked at since. Then walk the building with the bills in hand. The bill tells you what you pay for. The walk tells you what each line actually does.
Older offices tend to have lines that have nothing to do with talking to customers: a fire alarm panel, an elevator emergency phone, a gate or door entry box, a card terminal that still dials out. Some of these can move and some should stay where they are for now. The companies that service that equipment get a vote, so ask them what it requires before anything changes.
- Which numbers are printed on the website, trucks, signs and online listings, and which only ring a back office?
- Is there a fax number, and does anyone still send documents to it?
- Do the alarm panel or elevator phone use a phone line, and what does their service company require?
- Is there a toll-free number, and is it billed on a separate account?
- Who is the authorized contact on each account, and does the service address show the current suite number?
- Does any account carry a port-out freeze that the account holder must lift first?
Step 2: Test the internet before you sign anything
Voice is light on bandwidth. Cleod9’s guide puts a single call at about 100 Kbps each way, and an office of ten on calls only at roughly 1 Mbps each way. For voice alone, steadiness matters more than raw speed. The same guide sets targets for your connection: latency under 150 ms, jitter under 30 ms and packet loss under 1%.
Run the free C9 Speedtest from the desks where people actually take calls, during a busy hour, and over Wi-Fi if that is how people will connect. Plan for at least double the minimum on upload. If you are wondering whether your current handsets, network switch or connection will carry over, the page on whether you need new phones or faster internet walks through each piece.
While you are in the network closet, look at the power. Desk phones need power and internet, so a battery backup on the modem, router and network switch is simple insurance against a spring thunderstorm that flickers the lights for ten minutes.
Step 3: Choose a provider on the parts that break
Feature lists from business phone providers read nearly the same, so judge them on the parts of a switch that tend to go wrong. Four questions separate providers quickly, and the answers should come from the person who would actually do the work.
Who files the port, follows it daily, and fixes the paperwork when the losing carrier rejects it over a suite number?
Who designs the call routing with you before cutover, and is that person in your time zone and able to come on site?
How is the 911 location set and kept current for desk phones, home workers and the mobile app?
What is the total compared with today’s separate phone, video, messaging and conferencing bills, plus vendor service calls?
What Cleod9 can state plainly: it supports its own customers locally, so the person you work with is in your time zone and can come on site if needed; it runs on the Wildix platform, which is maintained and updated remotely; it supports Enhanced 911 with location information; and it prices each office as its own build rather than publishing a flat per-seat rate, because head count, locations and the mix of desk phones and apps change what gets set up. Get the porting and routing answers in writing, with names. The platform itself is described on the Cleod9 VoIP cloud phone system page.
Step 4: Port the numbers with paperwork that matches
Your existing numbers come with you. A port request needs a letter of authorization and a recent bill, and the details on it must match the losing carrier’s records exactly. The most common rejection is mundane: a suite number on the bill that no longer matches the door, or an authorized contact who left the company years ago.
If an account has a port-out freeze, the account holder has to lift it before the request goes in. If some numbers are moving and others, such as an alarm line, are staying with the old carrier for now, say so up front so the request lists exactly which numbers move.
Under FCC rules, a simple port has to be completed within one business day, and a carrier cannot refuse a valid port request. A multi-line office is a bigger job: allow a week or two between clean paperwork and cutover. Rejections, freezes, toll-free and fax numbers are covered in depth on the page about keeping your business phone number, and the week-by-week calendar is on the page about how long the switch takes.
Before the numbers move: build and train
Write the call routing as plain sentences before anyone opens a settings screen. Where does the main number ring during business hours? Who catches it at lunch? What happens if nobody answers in four rings? What do callers hear after 5 p.m., on holidays, and on the morning an ice storm keeps everyone home?
Then train. Everyone needs five things: answer, transfer, pick up a call ringing at another desk, check voicemail, and use the mobile app. Several short practice sessions on the real system beat one long demo. Cleod9’s user guides and short video tutorials on call transfer, call pickup, voicemail and conference calls make good homework.
If staff will use the mobile app, install it now and show them that calls and texts from the app display the business number, not their personal cell.
After the numbers move: test, overlap, then cancel
Cut over on a weekday morning, with the staff in the building. Call the main number from a cell phone. Call every direct line. Test the fax line if you kept one. Dial out from each desk phone and from the app, and check the caller ID the other end sees.
Keep the old service in place for a short overlap, running both systems in parallel until every number has moved and answered a test call. Then cancel only what is left over, line by line, against the inventory from step one. Canceling a line whose number has not finished porting releases that number.
Expect a few routing changes in week one. Someone will want the warehouse phone to ring longer, or the after-hours greeting to mention a different number. On a cloud system, each of those is a settings change, not a technician visit.
Where 911 fits into the switch
On VoIP, the 911 location is a record someone enters and has to maintain, so the switch is the moment to get it right. A newly installed multi-line system must let anyone dial 911 directly, with no 9 first, and must alert a central point, such as the front desk, whenever someone does. Calls from fixed office phones must also carry a dispatchable location: the street address plus floor or suite. For a softphone or mobile app used away from the office, the 911 call should carry a dispatchable location where technically feasible, which is why the location on file has to stay current.
Cleod9 supports Enhanced 911 with location information, and the records that drift first belong to remote staff and mobile app users. The guide to 911 on a VoIP phone system covers Kari’s Law, RAY BAUM’S Act and testing in more detail. This page is general information, not legal advice.
Common questions
Can we switch to VoIP without changing our phone numbers?
Yes. Existing numbers port to the new system, including the main line, direct lines and toll-free numbers. The request needs a letter of authorization and a recent bill, and the name, address, suite and authorized contact must match the current carrier’s records exactly. Keep the old service running until the port completes. Canceling early releases the number, which is the one mistake in this process that is hard to undo.
Do we have to buy new desk phones for everyone?
No. Desk phones are optional. Each person’s extension also works in a desktop or browser app and a mobile app, so an office can buy handsets only for the front desk and the people who live on the phone. Ask the provider in writing whether any of your current handsets can be reused instead of assuming they can, since phones built for an old system in the closet may not carry over.
What should we do about the fire alarm and elevator lines?
Treat them as a separate decision. Call the company that monitors the alarm and the company that services the elevator, and ask what their equipment needs before you move or cancel those lines. Leaving them on the existing service for now is a reasonable choice. Either way, list them on the inventory and tell your new provider which numbers are staying, so the port request does not sweep them up by mistake.
Should a multi-location office switch everything at once?
Not necessarily. If a Fort Worth office and a Plano office sit on separate carrier accounts, each account needs its own clean port paperwork anyway, so moving one location first is often the calmer path. The first site becomes the rehearsal: routing gets tested, staff questions surface, and the second location benefits. Design the routing for both sites from the start, so the two offices end up on one plan.
What happens to our calls if the office internet goes down after the switch?
The call logic sits with the provider, not in your building, so an office internet outage does not take the phone system down with it. With the office offline, inbound calls can go to the mobile app or to other numbers, but only if that routing was built in advance. That is why outage routing belongs in the routing step, not on the day of the outage. For short power blips, put the modem, router and network switch on a battery backup.
How do we compare cost with what we pay now?
Add up total spend, not per-line rates. Include the landline bills, any separate video, messaging and conferencing subscriptions, and what you pay vendors for service calls. Then ask each provider to list every one-time and monthly charge in writing, including taxes and fees such as the federal Universal Service Fund pass-through, 911 fees, Texas sales tax, and any activation, porting or equipment charges. That turns two quotes into a comparison you can actually make.
Find it in your city
Cleod9 has local pages on this for offices in 2 Dallas-Fort Worth cities. Pick yours.
Talking to Cleod9
Three things make a first conversation about switching worth the time: the line inventory from step one, speed test results from a busy hour, and a short list of the lines nobody in the office can explain. With those on the table, questions about porting, routing and cutover get specific answers instead of general ones.
Cleod9’s booking page offers a free VoIP consultation and a free test drive. Ask what the test drive includes and whether you can run it on your own connection with your own staff, and hold off on a cutover date until you have the answers.