Looking for cheapest very short-term cellphone plan
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I am trying to port a phone number to Google Voice, but they will only accept numbers from cellphone carriers. The phone number is currently on a VOIP service.
I’m looking for the cheapest option for temporarily porting the number to a cellphone, so I can get it into Google Voice from there.
I have extra phones from T-Mobile, AT&T Go Phone, Tracfone, and Sprint(?) (thanks to FW) if that helps.
What would be my cheapest option? Thanks for all suggestions.
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Someone told me recently that you can port over land lines as well… Not sure if true.
I remember there was a thread on FW about porting at some point, I think it involved the free ($0.99) T-Mobile SIM, but don’t remember why or whether or not you had to pay for service.
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Thanks for the reply. At least according to the FAQ for Google Voice, they will only port in phone numbers from cell providers, and they specifically mention that you can’t port from landlines or VOIP. If there’s a loophole, I’m interested.
I’ll see if I can look further into porting via T-Mobile. I have a few SIMs lying around as well, from the free/99c days. Those have come in handy more than once.
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Tello does not charge to port in or out, but it needs to be a Sprint phone
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Some will let you cancel after 7 days, like red pocket…
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GAH! Late to the party again.
FWIW, if you have Xfinity Internet, you can sign up for Xfinity Mobile and get unlimited voice & text essentially for free (just pay roughly $3/mo in garbage fees). They’re not doing BYOD (yet), but they have reasonable phone costs. You can pick up a very nice LG X Charge for $90 and turn around and eBay it if you don’t need it.
Incidentally, they’re a Verizon MVNO and the service is top-notch.
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@ctcarl said in Looking for cheapest very short-term cellphone plan:
You can pick up a very nice LG X Charge for $90
$180 is the regular price.
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I did our landline (CenturyLink) to Google Voice via Ting.com in August.
My son bought a new phone, so I took his old Galaxy S5 and ported our landline to it via Ting for a month ($6/device).
Porting took exactly seven days.
I let the phone number (landline) “sit” on cell phone for a good month (bluetoothed it our Panasonic cordless phones) before I then ported it to Google Voice.
My old GV # automatically forwards to new GV (landline) until January 2018.I have an ObiTalk 200 and set up 3 of our Google Voices on it. Getting the ObiTalk set up correctly took me a few weeks (mistakenly set up #'s in “circle of trust”).
Our old landline # now calls our home phone’s (Panasonic cordless) as well as my cell phone (via Google Voice).
I have another GV I’ve always used as a “junk/spam” phone # (especially for craigslist), I have the GV set to “Do Not Disturb”. If I’m selling something, and expecting a phone call, I just turn that option off.Another plus with having multiple GV on ObiTalk is that I can dial out using another #, like calling a used car place with my spam GV # by just dialing **3 (it’s the third GV # on my ObiTalk) before dialing the phone number.
Once the landline # was finally ported to GV, I transferred the cellphone to FreedomPop; set up our second GV # on that. There was twice that I lost internet (once my fault with modem/router, other with CenturyLink), so I used the FreedomPop phone for data to check on DSL outages, etc.
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I appreciate all the ideas. I haven’t done anything yet, but I did find a really old T-Mobile SIM card that includes a month of free activation. I don’t know if they’ll honor it though. Otherwise, Ting sounds like a good option, although I couldn’t tell from the website if they have an extra charge for porting a number like other carriers I’d seen. Tello would also be an option if I can find someone with an old Sprint phone. Thanks for everyone’s input on this.
