Porting landline to Google Voice

[exsdgal]

Happy New Year! Wishing each of you a healthy and prosperous 2012.

Has anyone ported their landline to Google Voice?

Researching about the process, I found the common suggestion was to get a prepaid mobile number, followed by the actual GV porting. Most of the forum threads were a couple of years old, and I would like to find out if anyone here has successfully ported their landline (AT&T in my case) to Google Voice recently.

Any feedback on your porting experience will be appreciated. Also did you regret porting to GV?

Thanks.

[swave]

I recently ported my landline (AT&T) to a new cellphone (Virgin Mobile). This took a week or 2. Then I ported my old cellphone number to GV. It cost $20. Finally, I forwarded my old cellphone number from GV to my new cellphone number (old landline). It works great!

You are correct that you can’t port your landline directly to GV. Transferring through a prepaid mobile number would be the best way to do that.

[SmellsFeeshy]

I don’t have any experience with porting a landline to GV but have been considering porting my cell phone # to GV. After researching it seems the main complaints about GV are:

1. Inability to receive picture text messages (MMS). This wouldn’t apply to a landline obviously.

2. Issues with text messages being delayed. Personally I’ve never had any issues with delayed texts using GV directly though.

3. Possibility of GV service being down.

Also I read some issues about people that ported away from GV and having issues receiving texts from GV users afterwards since the phone number is not actually “removed” from the GV system.

[Coronita]

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.

[SmellsFeeshy]

[quote=flu]
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.[/quote]

Interesting problem you are having flu. Latency issues are one of the reasons I am hesitant to convert my primary phone # to GV. The fact that there is an extra layer of having to route through Google just means another possible failure point with delayed SMS messages and failed calls. I guess this is proof that such issues do indeed exist.

[sdduuuude]

I just moved my AT&T landline to a $20 landline through Time Warner Cable on their “make your own bundle” plan (Free California Calling – Nationwide is $30).

I use the (internet-configurable) delay call-forwarding. It rings at the house twice, then hunts to my mobile.

Once you deal with their terrible customer service and get it up and running it quite good and very straightforward.

[Coronita]

For those interested. Here’s OOMA… I think it’s pretty good actually.

http://www.ooma.com/

You usually can pickup the equipment for about $175 on amazon when it’s on sale. Costco sells them too.

I’ve been pretty happy with switch to ooma. I use to use my cell phone all the time even at home, since I felt I had an unlimited plan on cell. Now with ooma, I pretty much use it all the time, which means I no longer really need an unlimited plan anyone on my cell.

If you do a lot of international dialing, rates are around 1cent to 2cents a minute.

The drawbacks on ooma are
1)Analog fax doesn’t work too well especially on older fax machines. Newer fax machines seems to take it ok, since they have modes to deal with VOIP landlines.

2)If you have a home burglar alarm that uses landline, you won’t be able to use OOMA with it. I use a radio and internet based security system so that’s not a problem for me.

3)You can pick up the box and take it where-ever you go you have internet access, even to a hotel if you really want to. The only thing you need to be aware is that if you make a 911 call from the box, the 911 dispatcher will think your address is the one you registered with the box. (You can change the 911 address, but it takes 24 hrs to refresh i think).

4)Porting a number to OOMA costs $39.

[exsdgal]

Thanks for all the great insights in the comments above.

Initially I was interested in porting to GV just to cancel my AT&T bill, while keeping my long time landline number. I predominantly use my mobile and was content to receive email notifications for the GV ported number.

This said, having just heard about Ooma I plan to give this a serious consideration. Thank you flu.

[Coronita]

If you are daring you can also try this voip solution..

OBi110

http://obihai.com/what-is.html

[briansd1]

Seems complicated. One cell phone is enough for me.

I do use GV to call Canada for free. For international I use a pinless calling card. Lucked out and found one charging 1c/min but they increased rates for new customers.

I also use Viber on smart phone.

GV is innovative. Would be interesting if Google bought T-Mobile.

[ryphoenix]

[quote=flu]
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…[/quote]

Unless I’m misunderstanding, you certainly CAN get unlimited calls over wifi/3g on Android via Google Voice. In fact that’s what I’m doing right now.

The easiest way to do it is to download an app called Groove IP. Set that up + Google Voice and you get unlimited VOIP calling using no minutes. I have my mobile number ported to GV, and have wifi at home. People call my GV #, it routes through GV and rings my cellphone and wifi. When I call on wifi it again routes through GV and people see my GV#.

Drawback is that my 3G sucks, so I have to use cell minutes to call when I don’t have wifi. People then see a strange number (my actual cell #). Just need to tell them.

Groove IP goes on sell semi often on both Amazon and Market. Decent dev communication (has facebook page) + updates.

[Coronita]

I did not know about grooveip…

Thanks. I learned something new today.

GV by itself doesn’t work over ip…You need other apps, and I was under the impression that those apps actually have minute allocations too.
For exammple, OOMA has an app that allows you to make calls on your cell phone too, but they have minute allocations too.

Did not know about grooveip using google voice.

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