What is FOC date?

One of my clients asked me what is FOC’d date? so the first thing I said was don’t get offended! which of course was too late because they were wondering what does that mean.
In the business world there are many of acronyms for FOC but in the VoIP world it refers to “Firm Order Commitment” + date, this is the day where the loosing phone company or loosing carrier has agreed to provide the telephone number to the gaining carrier.

Hungh?

When you transfer your phone from one provider to another it’s called porting, in that process you provide your current information to the gaining carrier (your new provider) which in turns submits the request to the loosing carrier (your old provider).
When the two providers come to agreement as to when they will release the number they assign it a FOC date and thats the day the new provider starts to provide you with phone service and the old one says goodbye.