topic Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number in Mobile Services

Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

asadguy — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:36:52 GMT

Hi @Chris_B, appreciate your comments here and other posts.

Could you please help me understand how to do this - I tried calling 150 and they said there is no way for them to search up a specific number. He did not allude to anything said here.

I am very keen to retrieve an old number and it may be possible via the last 6 digits but not sure who to communicate this to.

Would it be because i called from a PAYG sim that i was given this advice, and need a pay monthly sim? How do I verify what i have?

Thanks in advance

[Mod edit: Moved post to its own thread. Added title too]

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

Katie_J — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 07:39:08 GMT

Hi @asadguy.

I would recommend giving us another call.

Customer care agents have the ability to search for a specific number to see if this is available to reconnect.

Katie

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

asadguy — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:15:18 GMT

@Katie_J thank you for your reply.

I'm really struggling here. My phone was destroyed and my WhatsApp contains the old number that's been deactivated. I have 10 years of memories with my wife who has stage 4 lung cancer.

I called again and they said there is no chance of getting the number. I have cited these forums and the guide said they may be thinking about the hibernation period.

To clarify, my phone number was permanently deactivated a couple months ago.

He said wait a few months for it to come back into circulation and it may be possible then.

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

Christopher_G — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 10:34:34 GMT

Hi @asadguy,
I'm really sorry to hear about your wife's diagnosis. I can completely understand why recovering those WhatsApp messages is so important to you.
The thread you originally replied to is about searching for a new memorable number, rather than recovering a previously deactivated one, so I've moved your posts into a separate thread to make it easier to get the right advice.
You've done the right thing by following @Katie_J's suggestion and speaking with our customer support team.
From what you've been told, it sounds like the number is currently in quarantine. Once it leaves that quarantine period, the team may be able to check whether it's available again. Unfortunately, there's no guarantee that the number can be reactivated or reassigned to you, as this will depend on its status at the time.
If your main concern is accessing your WhatsApp account and message history, it may also be worth contacting WhatsApp directly to see whether they have any options available to help recover access.
I appreciate this probably isn't the answer you were hoping for, but you've taken the right steps so far.
Chris

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

asadguy — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 11:53:49 GMT

Thanks @Christopher_G

Do we know how long a quarantine period is roughly?

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

Chris_B — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:21:36 GMT

@asadguy It’ll be quicker to reach out to what’s app to get this resolved then waiting for the number to come out of quarantine. It’ll be over 12 months as EE have to be sure that anything associated with that number has been removed because by the user if it was to go to somebody else as they ( EE ) wouldn’t want someone getting notifications or anything that were meant for you. Even though you are that user of that number the quarantine period has to be ran first for this very reason.

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

Christopher_G — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 13:53:46 GMT

I've been looking this up through our internal systems, and I cannot find even an estimated time, @asadguy

All of our internal help information says that, if a number is not reactivated within 90 days of it being deactivated, the number will be lost. The customer support team can try searching for it once it's out of quarantine, but there's no way of us saying for certain how long it would be, or if it would be successful.

Chris

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

XRaySpeX — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 18:14:01 GMT

WhatsApp have means of changing your registered mobile no. Explore How to change your phone number

Re: Reactivate a deactivated mobile number

asadguy — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 23:17:25 GMT

I appreciate all the help and I have a good update.

The repair shop was able to get my old phone working again. I was able to change my number. But then the phone stopped working.

I tried restoring with the new number and although backups were found - I could not restore due to old backup being associated with old number. So now I was quite stuck.

Luckily, they got my phone working again properly. I quickly turned off the WiFi and my WhatsApp was still logged in. I was able to make a local backup with the new number. I also backed up everything.

Some things I learned about WhatsApp:

- As XRaySpeX, WhatsApp have a means of changing your number. But it's hard to get in touch with WhatsApp - it is pretty much AI responses now, I never got to speak with a human.

- if you have an email attached to your account, official WhatsApp documentation statement that this can be used to verify your account and skip SMS verification: https://faq.whatsapp.com/920665676465008/ and this would have been a viable route if I didn't change my number (and may have been safer to not change my number)

- if you log into WhatsApp on another device, the old device gets logged out but nothing is deleted unless you manually do something. The old device will give you the option to log back in. You will need to verify your number via phone number (for me, it was verifying the new number since I had changed the number) and once you log in, it will simply use the data on the phone - no restoration process needed, it'll be like you never logged out. I did this then performed a Google drive backup. I had the local backup just in case, but Google drive was more convenient.