Phone number retention rules, by country and carrier

The table above is the whole site in one view: every carrier rule we have read on the carrier's own page, with the date we read it. It grows one verified card at a time and never faster.

Japan's rows, checked 3 October 2026, are docomo, au and SoftBank. They are paid storage. docomo prints up to 6 years. au and SoftBank both print 5 years and end on different days.

Pakistan, checked 3 October 2026, is Jazz, Zong and Ufone: Jazz's prepaid voluntary-block answer prints 90 days, Zong's terms print a recharge table plus a reserved right after 180 days dormant, and Ufone splits a 90-day might on the slab page from a 180-day clause on the general terms.

Ghana, checked 6 October 2026, is the MTN card. The pay-as-you-go terms print a 90 day use in clause 3.8, where the customer shall lose the number the moment MTN cancels, and in clause 8.2, where the customer may lose the number if MTN cancels.

Saudi Arabia, checked 6 October 2026, is stc and Virgin Mobile. stc's mobile terms print 180 days of SIM validity from the last paid activity. A different stc terms page prints a maximum of 360 days. Virgin's clause 3.2 says the account may be closed after 90 consecutive days.

Iran, checked 6 October 2026, is the Irancell card. The Persian prepaid tab says Irancell may act after 90 days and notice. The English tab prints 16,240 Rials after three months when a balance remains.

Colombia, checked 8 October 2026, has no carrier card. The CRC FAQ says the operator may dispose of the number after two months without calls, data, SMS, a recharge or a current balance, after 15 business days of notice.

Spain, checked 8 October 2026, is the Movistar card. The recharge page gives the balance six months, then 40 days to recover it, and you could lose the number after more than 54 days with no balance.

France, checked 8 October 2026, is the Orange card. Mobicarte is valid for six months. Without identification on the customer space, the line will be suspended after two months of inactivity.

Indonesia, checked 8 October 2026, is the Telkomsel card. A 30-day grace follows the end of the active period or 90 consecutive days off the network. A later bullet gives 60 days to unblock.

Italy, checked 8 October 2026, is the TIM card. The card lasts 12 months and will be deactivated after 13, with free reinstatement on 119 within 11 months of expiry.

Peru, checked 8 October 2026, has no carrier card. OSIPTEL says a prepaid line with unused balance may stay active up to 210 calendar days. With no balance, the news page's examples run from Entel's two months to Claro's nine.

Turkey, checked 8 October 2026, is the Turkcell card. A load of 200 TL or more buys 185 days. Without it, the first window is 60 days and then 95 days half-active, and the later miss is 180 days half-active.

How to read a row

If you do nothing is the rule as that carrier states it, not as we summarize it. Where a carrier makes deactivation conditional on two things at once, which several do, the cell says so, because meeting one condition and not the other is the commonest way people lose a number they believed was safe.

Cheapest hold is the smallest thing that keeps the number, which is often not the smallest thing that keeps your plan working. Those are separate clocks on most networks and the difference is a recurring theme in the cards.

Roaming for codes answers one question only: does that carrier publish that its network must be set to roam before verification messages will reach you abroad? A blank here is common, because carriers write about the price of roaming far more often than about its prerequisites.

Twelve months is arithmetic, not a quoted price. Where a carrier publishes a recurring retention charge, we multiply it out and say so. Where it publishes a plan price instead, that belongs on its own page, because plan prices move faster than this table can follow.

Checked is the date someone opened the source and confirmed the rule there. A rule with no date is a rumor, and this column is why the site exists.

What unverified means, and what it does not

An unverified cell means we could not confirm that fact on an official page. It does not mean the carrier has no rule, and it never means the carrier is worse than one whose cell is filled in.

The distinction has teeth. Our BSNL card is almost entirely unverified because BSNL's own site did not answer three different clients on the day we tried, and that says nothing whatever about BSNL's policy. Meanwhile the regulator's floor still binds every operator in the country, so a reader with an unverified carrier is not without protection; they are without the carrier's own statement of what it adds on top.

We would rather show you a blank with its reason than a number with a shrug behind it.

Where the rules actually live

A note for anyone doing this themselves, because it cost us a day. The obvious places are the worst ones. Carrier FAQ sections and plan pages are increasingly JavaScript applications that serve an empty shell to anything that is not a browser, and it is easy to conclude from a few of those that a carrier publishes nothing.

Three of the four Indian carriers in this table publish their non-usage rules in full. None of them publish it where a reader would look first. Jio's is in a regulatory terms document on its content delivery network, Airtel's is inside the terms attached to prepaid plan vouchers, and Vi's is in a tariff filing made to the regulator. The pattern is that the regulatory and terms directories are plain documents while the marketing pages are applications, so that is where we now start on every new country.

How often a row is re-checked

Every page carries a next check date, ordinarily about ninety days out. Two things pull that date forward: a regulator publishing an amendment, and a reader telling us a rule has moved. Both get logged with their source in the rule changes log, which is also where a row that changed value is recorded rather than quietly overwritten.

If you find a row that is out of date, or an official page we could not reach, write to [email protected]. Corrections are the fastest way this table gets better. The country pages behind these rows start at keep your number abroad.