It’s been almost two months since I ditched my Sprint plan by porting my cell phone number to Google Voice. My goal was to lower my bill from $80 to $50 so I got rid of my smartphone and bought a feature phone. US Cellular didn’t let me port my number over to them unless I signed a two-year contract. Luckily I had recently read a Lifehacker article about getting the most out of Google Voice on a feature phone. In it I found out that most new feature phones let you pre-pend numbers in your contact list with hard pauses. This makes it easier for you to dial out on your feature phone and still have your number show up as your Google Voice number. That was all I needed to convince me to pay the one-time fee of $20 to port my cell phone number over to Google Voice. I realize texting is much more of a chore on a feature phone but one of the best things about Google Voice is how you can use emaill or the Google Voice app on a tablet to send and receive texts.
After a month and a half of using this service in Arcata and Palm Desert, I must say that there were some quirks but I’m generally satisfied with what I got for my $20. I can’t tell if it’s because I’m with US Cellular’s prepaid plan that my calls while I’m in roaming force me to have to dial the number I’m calling a second time. I’m curious to know what experience other people have had regarding this.
If anyone out there is at all interested in keeping the number they’ve had for years I recommend considering Google Voice.