No one ever knows I changed my number. I have forwarding set up from my ‘real’ number to whatever carrier number I’m using at the time.
Red Pocket has annual sales around black friday. That was when I tried them.
I will stick with $30 per line for 3 lines for now.
Oh, and Tmo did away with the taxes and fees Greatness. My bill is exactly $90.
Definitely a good move in your case, but it would add a step in the case of many other deals. For instance, my last three cell phone deals required a port-in to get the deal. If I had google voice and didn’t want to port-out of it, I would have to add the step of getting a number from a carrier (which costs money) in order to port-in for the deal.
What do you do for outgoing calls? Using Hangouts & let it go over data, or use GV app that calls you; or is there a better way now? (Last time I looked, the 1st way had inconsistent quality, and 2nd was not that convenient)
For Android it is seamlessly built in. You select what outgoing number you want the regular dialer (cellular) to use the first time you set up GV. After that it uses your GV number anytime you make a call.
For iOS I’m guessing you have the issues of the GV app. I wouldn’t recommend.
I have Android, Galaxy S* - various versions used in my household. We use the default Samsung Phone app - are you using some other dialer? Don’t think Samsung’s dialer integrates with GV that way. I also did the GV-Hangouts integration some time back…
Thanks, I didn’t know I had to install the GV app to hide my “real number”. I’ve always had GV forward calls to my cell. But when I make a call, they would see my real number and then I would have some explaining to do. Or, I get unwanted calls to my real number, which was the point of having GV in the first place.
Yes, answering both you and @olegos here, the Google Voice app is the key (download it from the play store). Then when you set it up the first time select if you want to have it prompt you before each call, use for all calls and use for international calls.
AFAIK it works with the samsung dialer. There’s not harm in trying it out with a throwaway GV number attached to your gmail account, you can just uninstall google voice app to go back to your regular cell #.
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When Google Voice app uses the phone dialer, does the call use data or the carrier minutes?
Carrier minutes. If you want to use data you have to download and install the hangouts dialer.
That Mint Sim rate ($15/mo for talk/text/2GB) requires you buying a 12-month plan, if you don’t want to switch numbers everytime you re-up the 3 month promo rate.
At their minimum, they require a 3 month plan commitment that prices out to 23/mo for that level of service, after a promo period at the price you quoted.
Has an edge of Republic if you want to commit to that, though, I guess.
(your middle-man “real” phone number at Google Voice has a non-zero cost, though, doesn’t it? Haven’t looked into that service in awhile, but it used to be $3-$5/mo to claim and retain a number)
Unless they offer another service, I believe GoogleVoice (GV) numbers have always been free, going all the way back to the GrandCentral days. I currently have multiple, free GV numbers that I use primarily for Craigslist and Letgo. Some of them are 5+ years old and haven’t cost anything, other than Google listening in and adding to their database of an unemployed cowboy in NYC.
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Good to know. I haven’t looked into them in quite a long time, and I would have sworn that “originally” they were $3/mo for a line/number.
It does cost $3 to ‘unlock’ your number (to then port out of GV).
It also costs $20 to port into GV.
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All I can think of is maybe you looked into a VoIP provider paired with Google voice, so you could use Google voice with a regular phone handset (like to replace a home phone) and not forwarded to another phone. I know I looked into that at one point.
What Stubify linked must be what I was thinking of (that whenever I had looked at it, it was related to porting a number through it, so there were costs involved).
Either way, their available area codes seem limited enough that I wouldn’t want a GV number as my primary, anyway.
You port your real, current, number to GV. ($20) You don’t pick from their numbers unless you need to port a throwaway into something like the Sprint unlimited plan ($3).
I dislike a phone’s small screen for web browsing, so I’m a low bandwidth user. I use my phone for checking email, texts, and voice.
I pay about $4.00 per month with Tello pay as you go. They charge 1 cent per text, 2 cents per Megabyte, and 3 cents per minute.
Is there a plan that offers much reduced rates for low speed only data? Like if I don’t need LTE and would settle for 3G, is there a plan that caters to that? Or is there a super cheap plan with a tiny amount of LTE data, and then unlimited 3G data. That would be great.
My hat’s off to you for wanting to go super cheap from that extravagant $4 month whopper of a bill. I’m now jealous, paying Tello $7/mo for unlimited text and 500Mb LTE and unlimited 3G. That sounds like what you’re asking for, but it’s still almost double your current fee, and it does not include voice.
Haha, I thought my request would be read that way.
The problem with pay as you go is that I’m in fear that I will accidentally leave a web page open, put the phone down overnight, and that web page downloads a huge amount of unwanted data that I have to pay for. So unlimited would give me peace of mind from something like that happening.
I investigated Tello’s $7/mo plan and found the unlmited data to to be 2G instead of 3G. I was afraid 2G might be unbearably slow, but maybe I should give it a try.
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