Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number | Hacker News Reader

Google Voice now lets you port your own phone number

engadget.com

121 pointsshawndumas51 comments

Is there any hope of getting support from google if something goes wrong with your google voice number?

Google voice worked great for me for over a year but, now, there seems to be about a 1/20 chance that any particular text message will get dropped, and a 1/10 chance that any call will get a message that says "we're sorry, you've reached a number that's been disconnected or is no longer in service. . ." And if that weren't enough, voicemail stopped working for me a couple of weeks ago.

Cell phone companies are notorious for having poor customer service, but it's at least possible to navigate their phone tree to reach a human who can escalate things to another human, one who actually has the power to get things fixed. Now, I kinda regret giving out my google voice number, since I'm going to have to get everyone to switch to my 'real' cell number if google doesn't spontaneously decide to fix these bugs.

As a paying customer of Google Apps, I have an incredibly difficult time getting decent customer support for the paid services, so I wouldn't hold my breath. Also, in the past I have submitted tickets for other free service like Analytics and they have gone unanswered each and every time.

Google is great at innovating, but their support story is pathetic. It's the big reason we stopped a 1000-person migration and stuck withbExchange (except for a small group of techies).

Agreed and given a hard upvote. Any situation that requires talking to a human at Google is the epitome of "you're completely screwed."

I've never had a substantial delay in an "outage" situation when I call support, and I've never, except once, waited more than 2 days for a service / technical issue that's not resulting in an outage via email support. The one time the delay went longer, I called our account rep and had a response within a few hours. I've also seen changes to services based on suggestions we've made. I can't imagine the Education support is better than the Business support.

Google is great at innovating, but their support story is pathetic.

They should create a customer support "marketplace" for particular services where customer service is key, then outsource customer support. This should be structured so that Google could comparison shop different providers on a kind of "spot" market.

To give a counter-anecdote, the organization I work for bought several Google Search Appliances and we have had excellent support. Granted, GSAs are not cheap. However, I do think Google has the organizational capacity to provide good support when they want to.

As a sucker who bought a phone from google, i'd say Stay away from anything critical from them!

still finds it difficult to answer a simple phone call if the phone is charging for more then 10min. As i have to lock the screen, then unlock (to work around a software bug in the touch driver), enter the password (damn work email), and finally, slide to answer (or more likely, see who called and call them back)

You didn't buy a phone from Google, you bought it from HTC (I assume this is the Nexus One, the same as I have) with heavy Google branding on it. If you want to get hardware support, you'll go through HTC directly. Learn your lesson that HTC has shitty component quality and never buy from them again. Google just makes the software, which works fine. The hardware in the Nexus One is another story...

As soon as some good dual core phones ship this year, I'm jumping ship off the HTC boat.

Those sure sounded like software complaints...

the store was on google.com

google billed my Credit card.

google posted several videos bragging how they had control on the device creation. (ironically, there was even one devoted to quality control of the device)

And yes, the other reply is correct. most of them are software issues.

Perhaps these concerns are registering. As of this morning the article's headline has appended to it: "(update: option disappears)"

This is like saying "The Titanic now lets you bring your own lawn chair." I wish I had never started using Google Voice. The Android app is so janky that it may as well not exist. It's been three years and I still can't receive picture messages. Text messages get dropped 20% of the time, and you have to choose between having them forwarded to your cell phone with contact names inexplicably prepended to every message (often resulting in long texts being split up into 3 or more parts that get delivered in the wrong order) or having them delivered via pull notification on the Android app, which might notify you of new texts within 24 hours. Sometimes, calls will instantly disconnect when I pick them up. There is no support. There is no hope. There is only Google, the Fortress of Customer Solitude.

... and GV still cant send international text messages. I mean come on....let me pay for it at the very least.

I will gladly pay to send/receive mms, international text.

Its mind boggling that they expect your google voice number to be "the one to rule them all" when it can't emulate half the functions that are considered minimum today.

(Disclosure: I work at Twilio.)

International SMS is a really nasty landscape. I know firsthand that it's very hard to put together an international SMS product that is anywhere near what we would consider reliable. I imagine if Google offered it, even more people would complain about its unreliability than are complaining about its current absence.

This is a problem that Twilio is actively trying to solve.

As a customer at T-Mobile I have issues sending text messages overseas, or even back to the US when I am in Europe that I completely understand this, and also understand why Google isn't implementing it.

Thanks for the insight. It'd be interesting to know from a technical standpoint where the problems lie, if you don't mind providing a little detail.

I would have happily paid $10/month for Google Voice if that translated into a more reliable service. As it stands now I just don't trust it. I use it exclusively as a SPAM dump these days. In the last month or so I noticed voice mail transcription just stopped working (or are massively delayed?) even when the messages are perfectly clear. So that was the last useful feature for me and now it doesn't work anymore.

At the risk of complaining about a free service, the most frustrating/humorous part is their voice to text translation service. While about the only thing that comes out accurate is the number the call came from, the rest of the conversation translates to phrases that are worse than any drunk dial line. Again, good for a laugh but not dependable enough to build a solid business model on if you’re trying for a large piece of the cell market.

Oh, it's no risk. I openly complain about Google Voice and it has never been anything except 100% free-as-in-beer. I wish I paid for Google Voice so I could demand that they refund me. You see, I got on board when it was still called GrandCentral, and there seemed to be every intention to create a Real Product with Real Support that people would pay Real Money for. Then Google bought it, and I figured, "Great! Now it'll be a Real Product just like Google search or Gmail, but free, or at least affordable!" Instead I got this bupkus. Bah, humbug! etc.

The transcriptions are fabulous, by the way--I think a great business model would be piping them into a web service for use instead of Markov chains in spam e-mail. Once it translated an entire message from my Dad as an ominous string of "Ha ha ha ha ha"s.

the english transcripts of international messages are the best

I guess I've had better luck--the text translation is far from perfect--BUT, it has been sufficient for me to find out the gist of the message. Also, I get an email notification--for example, today, while I was at work, I got a call from a Verizon tech that they were at my house. My phone was in my office and I was in another location (with email), so I get the notification and see the number. This is useful for me.

Another nice use case is that when I go out of the country, I can see if someone called my US number--so while the service is not perfect, at least for me, I find it useful--and free ;>

I think that's the main problem, you have to get "lucky" in order to get text translation that is "sufficient to find out the gist of the message".

>delivered via pull notification on the Android app, which might notify you of new texts within 24 hours.

Is not accurate. As far as anecdotes are concerned, the Activity navigation is wonky in the Android app, but I have ZERO problems with dropped texts. My friends email me picturse.

The details:

The cost of porting is $20 (payable through Google Checkout).

Your mobile phone service plan will be terminated when you port your number to Google Voice and your carrier may charge you an early termination fee.

Once porting is complete, you will not be able to receive calls to your mobile phone until you complete the following steps:

Google Voice is not a mobile phone service provider, so you must setup a new mobile phone service plan (with your existing carrier or a new carrier) and request a new number.

Once you've secured a new mobile service plan and a new number, you will need to add this new number to your Google Voice account as a forwarding phone.

You may be unable to receive text messages for up to 3 business days after the porting process is complete.

Your Google Voice number will be replaced by the number you are porting. It will remain on your account for 90 days.

This seems like quite a bit of hassle for what it provides. It'll be interesting to see how many users actually go through with this. On a somewhat related note, anyone know what happened with the 333 US area code that google purchased a while back? I know they offered numbers under that for a while, but stopped offering them due to issues with carriers.

I was really excited about this feature until I saw this. I want my Google Voice number just for when I'm away from my phone but maybe by my computer. I don't like giving out my Google Voice because text messaging is annoying since it doesn't come directly from the sender's number but by some other number.

Does anybody here also notice a lag during Google voice calls?

Sometimes the lag is up to half a second or one second, and it can really make conversations difficult because you start interrupting the other person (even though you don't realize it and think you started talking when there was a lull in the conversation).

Definitely. This is the only reason I won't use GV as my primary number. I don't call often, but when I do, I expect it to work.

(However, after reading some of these comments and using my noggin, I'm not sure I'd trust something as critical as my phone to a company who's notorious for no customer service.)

I'm really surprised that mobile phone companies are not providing exact same features as GV ... GV features are nice but not impossible to implement...

so i wonder what will happen if to undermine competition from GV, Verizon gives away a phone number that will be ringed (or forwarded) to 'n' number of devices and sends you sms and email message if someone leaves you voice message... how difficult is this to implement for a company that spends millions of tech dollars on almost daily basis???

Wildfire was absolutely spectacular, and I think better than GV. Too bad they didn't adapt. I believe someone has ported similar features to Asterisk.

Bell Atlantic (Verizon now) years ago had something very similar with ContactLine. You had 99 preprogrammed 'call plans'. 1-9 would forward through with various options, 10-19 would forward with screening, in the 30s you could check in and it would forward the call to the location where you were, with a greeting to call the person. 60-69 call plans would page you, allow you to get to a phone, and it would bridge the call. I believe produced by Octel, later purchased by AT&T, spun off into Avaya. Back in the late 80s, made the mobile phone incredibly powerful - back when phones had 3 watts, not the .6 watts we have today. :)

Vonage has Simulring which has some of the features that Google Voice has.

However, to the phone companies, any solution here is a cost center, not a profit center (except ContactLine which was $19.95/month). It is difficult to get them to spend even more money providing a service that a fraction of their users would use.

Parts of Wildfire live on under the commercial ownership/guidance of Jive software:

http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

There are quite a few interesting products over there.

That doesn't look like the Wildfire from CR Technologies - just a product similarly named.

Wildfire as a phone service ran on Dialogic cards and acted like a virtual assistant. Calls you made were bridged through, so, you could have an 800# pointed to your wildfire number and call from a payphone. You would call in, listen to your voicemail and with voice commands be able to direct it to call the person back, conference in someone, etc. If you were listening to messages when an incoming call was coming in, wildfire would tell you that you had an incoming call, etc.

The real power of it was building your contact list. If you called my number, Wildfire would interview you. I couldn't find any of the old audio demos that used to be online, but, it went something like this:

Chris isn't available can I take a message? you speak the message, Wildfire would say, can I ask for a callback number? you would give the number, I heard, 555-1414 is this correct? yes. Is this a work or mobile number? work. I don't recognize this number, may I ask for more information? Yes (would register your name, additional numbers, weekend number, etc) Ok, thank you, I'll have Chris call you when he get the message.

At this point, Wildfire would page me with a code, # of messages, etc. Keep in mind, while you were on the line, Wildfire was already calling any registered numbers I had to try and contact me and would bridge the connection if possible. You call in, listen to the message, Wildfire would connect the call. During the call, if you needed to conference in someone, you said WildFire 'Here I am' Call Bob, 'Do you want to add this call to a conference?' Yes. 'Dialing'

If you called into the 800#, you could also direct calls from there. Depending on the interview Wildfire got from an incoming caller you could say: Wildfire, 'Here I am' Call Bill, 'I have a work and mobile number' Dial work, 'Dialing'. Wildfire would listen in, make sure the call was connected, offer to dial the mobile number if you didn't get a connection, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOq2Ks-aPcA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYCxtagsvdM

are two demos that I could find.

I've written so many notes regarding this. With sip service being as inexpensive as it is, and contact management software being in the cloud, it would be a very powerful tie-in. For a product in the mid to late 90s, it was very ahead of its time making road warriors very efficient.

Hence "parts" :) Jive used to have Wildfire, in its entirety, in their website. It has since dwindled to the Asterisk integration stuff you see on their website now.

That is a different Wildfire. From what I can tell, that is the Wildfire IM platform. The Wildfire I'm talking about was from CR Technologies, and was a voice telecom product, was sold in the mid 90s until it was discontinued around 2001 - with Orange Telecom having the last working enterprise installation until 2005, though, they wouldn't add any new clients after 2003.

i would appreciate courtesy if you explain your reasoning for downvoting me .... do you really think as a hacker that its impossible to provide those features???

I would like to switch our land line telephone number to Google Voice. My wife and I use our cellphones 95% of the time, but old acquaintances still sometimes call our old landline number. Looks like there is no support for this?

There is a work-around for this, but it's somewhat painful and not guaranteed to work. You can port a land-line number to Vonage (at least in many cases, not all localities support LNP at this time, but you can check your number for portability at Vonage.com). You should then be able to port your Vonage number into Google Voice. I have not tried this second step, but it should work.

EDIT: Apparently, it doesn't work for VOIP numbers at this time. Nonetheless, Vonage does offer many of the same features as GV, like multi-forwarding and VM transcription, for a reasonable, flat monthly fee.

I ported my wife's 212 phone number (the original area code for Manhattan, before overlays, arguably the most sought-after area code in the country) to Vonage before we left NYC. People are always asking me how I did it. To be fair, it took almost two months to complete the port, and there was a lot of yelling on the phone at Vonage and AT&T (previous landline service provider) in the interim. For a while there, I thought that the number was lost for good.

I will warn you, if you move across time zones, porting your home number may come back to bite you -- we regularly get calls from businesses at 9:05 AM EST, which is 6:05 AM PST ...

So if I port my real cell number over to Google Voice and my cell plan gets canceled, then isn't Google Voice basically useless because I wouldn't have a cell to forward it to? It'd be nice if they could work with carriers to assign you a new number and transfer your existing to GV in one transaction.

The idea is that you then get new service, with a new number you can use as your primary number with the old one still forwarding. Basically the equivalent of a forwarding address.

However, this may be preparation for the other shoe to drop. The other shoe would be some kind of data-only plan for Android phones where your actual phone service is simply VoIP with your Google Voice number, over the data plan.

That seems likely in the future, particularly since Gingerbread (Android 2.3) supports SIP-based Internet calling out of the box now.

Can you also port a GV number to somewhere else?

I know you can port them to Twilio :) (I work at Twilio)

Interesting. Could you describe the procedure? I started at porting from Google to another (Callcentric) and didn't know how to provide the billing documentation they asked for. What do you ask people to provide?

There is no fee to port a number with Twilio, and once you port it in it is $1/month to hold onto the number. To port, you log into your Twilio account and visit the phone numbers tab and select "port number", or hit this URL https://www.twilio.com/user/account/phone-numbers/porting

At this point, you fill out a form asking for the billing information and then we follow up with you to get authorization to transfer the number (usually just a signature). It usually takes about 10 business days to complete the port.

(I work at Twilio too)

Thanks for the follow up. What do you accept as billing information for a Google Voice number? That's the part I got stuck on. Is this merely a formality? Is a screen shot of the account page acceptable? As a free service, they have never sent me a "bill".

I'm pretty sure we accept a screen shot of the account page.

For me, the beauty of Google Voice is having an additional number through which I can route texts and calls so that I can filter them how I see fit.

Does Google Voice number portability apply to:

- pre-paid mobile numbers?

- VOIP carriers?*

- mobile numbers that were previously landline numbers?

- all US-based mobile carriers or just a handful?

* I remember reading that some VOIP carriers are considered mobile carriers.

  These providers appear to be supported:
    Verizon Wireless
    AT&T
    Sprint (As well as Boost Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Nextel and other related providers)
    T-Mobile
    Tracfone (And other related providers)
  These providers appear to be unsupported:
    Cricket Wireless
    US Cellular

according to http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=76caf...

Timed perfectly before the launch of the Verizon iPhone.

I wonder how long Google has been keeping this one up its sleeve?

So, that is how google is becoming a mobile phone company (among other things)...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com