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Two ways to get your Lumen / CenturyLink Business number to your agent. Forwarding keeps Lumen / CenturyLink Business as your phone company and sends calls over. Moving the number (porting) makes Answering Agent your phone company for that number.
Forwarding codes are confirmed on CenturyLink’s own small-business support page (high confidence); the linked business-specific quick-reference PDFs found in search results returned 404 and were not used. Porting mechanics are confirmed on an official CenturyLink page, but that page does not mention a PIN at all, so pinRequired is left null rather than adopting third-party claims. Checked 2026-09-11.

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Forward calls

1

Pick up the handset

On the line to forward, lift the receiver and listen for a dial tone.
2

Dial *72

Listen for a stutter dial tone followed by a regular dial tone.
3

Dial the destination number

Enter the 10-digit number where calls should ring.
4

Confirm activation

When the phone is answered by a person or voicemail, hang up — Call Forwarding is now active. If there’s no answer or the line is busy, hang up and repeat the *72 steps within a couple of minutes to force-activate.
5

Deactivate when done

Lift the receiver, dial *73, and listen for two short tones followed by a regular dial tone.
6

Call your business number from another phone

Answering Agent listens for the call. When your agent picks up, the phone numbers step in your dashboard turns green.

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Good to know

  • CenturyLink’s own small-business Call Forwarding support page documents only unconditional forwarding (*72/*73); no separate busy or no-answer star code is published there, so those fields are left null rather than guessed.
  • In some legacy CenturyTel (‘CTL’) regions, forwarding is instead activated by calling a regional access number, dialing the phone number minus area code, entering a PIN, then *72 — a different flow from the standard *72-from-the-handset method.
  • The Lumen enterprise/wholesale documentation (docs.lumen.com) belongs to the separate Uniti Solutions/Lumen Enterprise entity that resulted from the 2025 sale of Windstream/CenturyLink’s enterprise business and does not describe Lumen/CenturyLink’s small-business POTS forwarding.

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Move your number

Start the move from Dashboard, then Phone numbers, then Add a number, and choose Move my number. Upload your latest bill and we read the details for you. Have these ready:
Do not cancel your service with Lumen / CenturyLink Business until the move is complete. A cancelled number can be lost.

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Watch out for

  • If CenturyLink has placed a freeze on the number, the customer must contact CenturyLink to have it removed before the new carrier can complete the transfer.
  • The new provider initiates the port and contacts CenturyLink — CenturyLink does not start the process from the customer side.

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Sources

Checked on 2026-09-11 against Lumen / CenturyLink Business’s own pages.