The why is because I would not have to do it at all, if BT did not want to push Digital Voice at customers and instead for a reasonable charge just provided a basic VOIP service.
The only way to unlock your old landline number for VOIP involves totally leaving BT, as you say, porting a landline number results in the cancelation of the telephone service and anything else connected to it. This is despite the fact that I would have considered just a broadband service from BT (even if there had been a short interruption) now I'm staying away for a least a year.
To say BT have nothing to do with the rejection of porting request is missing the point that I'm still their customer, for now, they could have held the rejection until checking with me if I wanted to move provider instead of blocking it (*the address reason looks to be a red herring).
I know BT and Openreach are not the same company, however they are closely linked and must have shared my data when the line was installed. I have *checked now (as I said) that they did have and do have my correct address information connected to my phone number and account.
You are correct in saying that it is only consequential that I have had to pay for a failed porting request. I have however now demonstrated that the correct information was given on my behalf to BT, to the best of my knowledge they send the actual forms I completed. BT however say they have no mechanism to reconsider a past request so the only option to retain my number is to try again.
I started this to find who to contact at BT, the people I talked to at BT were helpful, I just feel that this is overly complicated and that many will just 'give up'.
