A Week After Porting To Google Voice

Just about a week ago today, I completed porting my number from T-Mobile to Google Voice.  Unlike some people, I had a painless porting experience because I had no contractual commitment to my wireless carrier.  I just added a new line to my wireless contract and for about two days had two lines.  When the Google Voice port was complete, one of those went bye-bye.

From BizBuzzMedia

What Is Better with Google Voice:

Truthfully: nothing substantial.  Same phone, same carrier, different number now.  Everything else is the same.  Incoming calls can now be routed to mulitple phones - something that's useful in marginal coverage areas and when traveling overseas.  Google won't forward your calls to international numbers (yet) but they will forward to domestic or Internet addresses that can be forwarded.

What Could Be Better (Depending on your circumstances):

Cheaper:  You can save $250/year with AT&T or Verizon by eliminating texting fees.  Thanks to the Google Voice Port, Verizon and AT&T can now be $20 cheaper per month because I don't need text messaging - just voice and data since Google Voice can route your texts through the data service.

Unlimited voice on Verizon and AT&T are both $70 and data is $30 on Verizon (unlimited) or $25 on AT&T (very limited).  T-Mobile's bundled plans include texting, so there's no savings to be had from them, but they are more generous with data than AT&T.

More Secure:  Your phone number, if you've kept it a long time, is valuable.  It's how a lot of people contact you.  You need to keep it - and you need to make sure you can keep it across jobs and over time regardless of your wireless carrier.

What Is Worse:

Caller ID:  Google Voice can make your calls if you want it to, but it cannot (yet) show your caller id.  That means people who screen their calls won't know it's you calling.  That could be good or that could be bad - depending on how popular you are.

To avoid confusion with my new number, I restricted caller ID - I figure it's better to show no number than one you don't want people to know.

Call Quality: Eventually, when Google enables caller ID for your number, it may still not be attractive ot use it because the call quality on Google's calls is not very good.  The VoIP system still cannot quite match regular lines and when you add in issues relating to signal and cell coverage, calls can get very bad.


Overall, most users will not find the reasons to change compelling.  For gadget freaks like me, the ability to test any number of wireless devices and VoIP systems without risking the loss of my number is great.  And should I go to a company that gives me a cell phone, I won't have to worry about choosing between giving up my number to the company or paying to keep a second phone.

One possible market that may find this very appealing are immigrants and lower income folks.  Google Voice can provide a continuously owned phone number at no cost that can be paired with disposable pay-as-you-go cell-phones - but that was possible even before number porting.