I ported my personal cell phone to google voice I mainly use it for the number forwarding feature so that I can forward my calls on my old number to more than one cell phone.

I have many different phones used for personal and work, and I carry a different one each time, so I have GV setup so it rings all my cell phones…

I also install GV on the android phones so it can use my personal number for outgoing calls when I feel like it, or if it’s for work, I turn off GV and use the actual number on the cell phone (work number) instead of my personal.

If you’re planning to replace your landline with a cell phone, you can first port the landline to a pre-paid cell, and then port for a pre-paid cell to gv…No problem.

However, if you plan on keeping a landline (just with a different number), please note that while calls to your GV number can be forwarded to a landline, you can’t make a call from the landline and pretend to be your GV number. For example, let’s say you GV number is 888-777-8888…. If someone calls 888-777-8888, you can configure GV to forward incoming calls to a landline, say 222-333-5555. BUT, if you call from 222-333-5555, you can’t directly pretend to have the dialout number 888-777-8888. From a mobile phone (android particularly), you can install GV software so that when you make a cell phone call from your cell, it replaces your cell number with your GV number (888-777-8888) so people think you’re calling from your google voice number.

PLEASE NOTE: if you use Google Voice on a mobile phone, it doesn’t go through the data service, it goes through the voice network… So if you were hoping to use Google Voice on your cell phone when connected to WIFI only mode and not incur any voice airtime, that’s not possible (at least not on android). Google Voice calls always goes through voice network. You need to consider this if you previously were talking a lot on your landline, and now port into a mobile phone without an unlimited talking plan…

If you plan on keeping a landline or if you just talk a lot from home, I think you’re better off porting the landline number to a VOIP provider.
I use OOMA for my landline. It works pretty well. I ported my home number to OOMA, and when I travel to a different house, I just move my OOMA box around. Free unlimited long distance and cheap international. Well, it’s not free exactly anymore because you need to pay the taxes, but it’s like $4/month. If you pay more, you can get their premium service which has integration to google voice.

Lastly, my experience with Google Voice has been generally acceptable (not great, but usable). My main complaints about GV (mainly the Android GV application)

1)Sometimes when I call from my mobile phone, the call doesn’t connect the first time. If I disable GV, I can make the call (so it’s not a signal strength issue)…I suspect the issue is that when you use GV to call from the mobile phone, call setup is taking too long, since you call a google number first, and then it gets transferred to the number you actually dialed. There’s been times I wasn’t able to make a call at all with Google Voice, but if I disable Google Voice, I can call directly.

2)On the Android Google Voice implementation, GV sometimes doesn’t work too well with Bluetooth/PBAP carkits. If you have GV enabled, and your call fails, it will bring up a UI dialog asking if you want to make the call without GV. Well, if you’re driving you can’t look down on the phone and fiddle with a UI dialog… This is a major violation of handsfree driving design. ALSO, if you configure GV to “always ask to use google voice before dialing number”, totally won’t be usable with a Bluetooth/PBAP carkits, since if you try to dial from the Bluetooth carkit, you get the UI dialog all the time.

The again, you really shouldn’t be worrying about #2 too much, since they introduced Bluetooth MAP into carkits, which now allows you to read email/sms/mms on your carkit…So don’t worry about car safety… Go figure.