Recovering a specific TW phone number?

Hey all,

TLDR: Phone stolen. Need to get back same Taiwan phone number. How?

I had an unfortunate boxing day last week. I had my phone stolen while travelling in South America.

Note that I’m no longer in Taiwan, and left more than a year ago.

Unfortunately, I tied my Taiwan number to an app (Telegram), and I believe the easiest way to recover the account would be to get the Taiwan number again so I can do a SMS verification.

It was a ChungHwa Telecom prepaid number. I still have the SIM, but I believe its been deactivated as I haven’t used it in a year.

I tried calling the number, and I got the message that the phone number is “incorrect”, so I’m assuming it’s unassigned at the moment and should be free.

My question:
Is it possible to get back the same number, if I buy a new SIM? Is there a process of selecting a specific phone number? Do the numbers get recycled back to the same carrier?

Thanks!

Yes, but only contract phones. Not sure how you’d do that if you don’t live here anymore though…

I had quite similar problem , I lost my SIM card while I was traveling in Hong Kong , my phone was a prepaid number with Taiwan mobile
I couldn’t recover my old phone number, so I had to purchase a new SIM card with new number and then create new accounts

About the Telegram app you can find more info about what to do when you phone got stolen

Thanks!

Fortunately I have some (not super close, but close enough) relatives in Taiwan. If it were pre-paid I’d totally ask them to get the sim/number on my behalf.

But if it’s contract only, I’m not sure it’s worth all the hassle…

Sorry, to clarify, did you find it was impossible to recover your old phone number? Just wondering if the possibility exists of doing it via contract phone, as monokuro mentioned.

What I did to get my number, was sign up on the cheapest plan, then instantly cancel it, just paying the termination penalty and then switching it over to a prepaid.

Was a while ago, but might still be worth checking :blush:

That sounds brilliant! In that case, I might go ahead and do that.

May I ask how difficult it was to get the specific number? In Canada, I’ve found that they give you a few numbers at a time and you’re supposed to choose from those numbers. So it’s difficult to get a specific telephone number.

Is it similar in Taiwan? Or can I give them my old number and say “I want this number specifically” and they’ll fish it out of a database?

You can give them the exact number, and if it’s free you’ll get it.

In my case I wanted a number combination “abcde” so they just told me all the possibilities I could pick from.

I did this with fareastone.

Yes , I found it was impossible to recover my old phone number so that is why I bought the new SIM card .

thanks – may i ask how recent this was, and what telecom?

I had a Taiwan mobile phone, the contract came up and I cancelled it without porting the number. A week later I regretted it so I asked that carrier if I could sign up again and get the number again and was told no.

I had this problem about 3 years ago , I use Taiwan mobile 台灣大哥大