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Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

Huh, the part where you can either keep your original handset phone number or your GV number on one account (but not both) is problematic. I've been trying to get people to call and text my GV number for ages, but some still use my legacy handset number. From the sounds of it, I'll have to do some juggling to keep the two numbers, or just let my old handset number lapse back into the pool, as I can't keep both on the same google account.

Not quite a deal-breaker, but a big enough deal that I will think carefully after my invite shows up (if it ever shows up). OTOH, the pricing model represents something like $30 or more a month cheaper than what I'm currently paying.

I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.

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I realize this doesn't help you now, but when I switched carriers a few years ago I decided to port my primary number to google voice (for a one-time $20 fee) and then got a new carrier number that I have never shared with anyone.

Not needing to port numbers since then has been really nice. I'm now on the company cell phone plan and I didn't have to port my number into their plan and put it into their control.

Another advantage is that when my phone got soaked while on vacation I was able to log into my google voice account on my wife's phone and not have any interruption of service.

Here is an article on how to set up an autoresponder with a new google account using google voice and gmail: http://www.zdnet.com/pictures/how-to-build-an-sms-text-auto-...

Google will send you an email for each SMS if you set it up that way. You can have that email be forwarded to your primary gmail account in addition to setting up the autoresponder.

Google Voice is great. I'm currently using the T-Mobile $30 plan (5 GB data, 100 minutes voice) in combination with Google Voice. The amount of included data is more than sufficient for me, and for voice calls I use Google Voice via VoIP (Hangouts dialer).

Yep. I do the same thing. Not sure why I expected Project Fi to be more financially attractive than this, considering how cheap it is. Oh well.

Project Fi is more expensive than the T-Mobile $30 plan but it does have some significant advantages. You can use Sprint's entire network as well, you get unlimited international roaming (which is a godsend if you make occasional overseas trips), and you can use the native voice network for calling and SMS which gives much better coverage and reliability especially in rural areas or crowded places like stadiums.

For me international roaming is the main advantage (although I usually buy local SIM cards if I'm in another country for an extended duration). T-Mobile coverage works very well where I live (Bay Area). If I'd need better coverage for rural areas I'd probably sign up at a Verizon MVNO such as Straight Talk ($45 for 5GB).

I'm just starting my second month with Fi. I also had the T-Mo $30 plan and thought it might come out more expensive.

I've come out actually slightly cheaper than the T-Mo plan. WIFI seems to be pretty ubiquitous where I go because I only used ~ 300MB of data last month.

Usually I use ~ 2GB per month. The one big change I did at the starting of the month was set my podcast streaming apps to sync on WIFI. That's about half of my monthly data right there.

Edit: fixed typo.

Sprint's network is pretty bogus, though. For $45 a month I use Cricket, where I get 5GB of bandwidth (10GB for $55, it's a recurring promotion) on AT&T.

I'm currently on t-mobile, so the project fi network is at least as good as what I have now. The pay-as-you-go data plan is also going to work out to be cheaper for me - I currently have the 3 gig plan with rollover, because every few months I end up in a hotel with bad internet and really need more than a gig of data. I'm definitely paying every month for a service I only occasionally need.

I wonder what it will be like, psychologically, when I'm paying by the megabyte for data. Right now, I know I've already paid, so I just stream stuff. Under project fi pricing, my total cost per month will go down, but it will also be metered- I can have it go way down if I'm frugal. Not sure if I'll download that audio book on LTE if I know I'm going to end up paying an extra buck for it. I mean: it's just a buck, but still. Interesting to see where I land.

I do the same but in the last few months I have noticed strange latency on my Hangouts calls. There seems to be a very short delay that causes conversations to be more difficult than they need to be. It's probably my home internet (since this is the only place I use Hangouts to call) but I am pretty sure I have a good connection. I haven't tested latency thoroughly but on the bandwidth side of things I have something like ~80mbit/5mbit through Comcast.

Yeah, I did the same thing. The problem is just that a small percentage of my friends and family still call my original actual cell phone number instead of the GV number. Moving to fi would mean I'd keep the GV number but lose the older cell number, and those late-adopters won't know they're texting the wrong number.

> I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.

ring.to does this for free for US numbers down to the SMS autoreply. They're actually run by the same company (Bandwidth.com) that Google uses for service in a lot of area codes.

What is the price of the ring.to service? They did every effort to advertise pricing or if it's a free service (which I doubt).

ring.to is free. I have five numbers parked there (but am otherwise unaffiliated). They make their money by, I assume, connection fees paid by other phone companies whose customers call numbers parked at ring.to.

buy a 20.00 burner phone from 7-11 and port your number into it, use the web account or phone options to set up your forwards. Put the phone in a drawer and shut it off. It should last years if not too many people call it.

... but you should be able to make outgoing calls from that number from time to time, too.

Yes, of course, it's a basic cell phone still. Many buy them, drop 20 bucks on it, pull it apart and make a nice GPS tracker insead of paying $800 for a "professional" work truck positional monitoring system.

Edit: spelling

Huh, ring.to looks like a good idea. I can switch my handset number to being just my plain-old GV number I've had forever, and port my legacy cell number to ring.to and set up autoreply on SMS and some other stuff just to help the transition and make sure I see who is calling my old number.

Hey, I've never met another GV user in the wild, so please forgive a slightly off-topic question, but- how can you stand it?

I get my voicemail/missed call notifications totally at random. Sometimes they're immediate! Sometimes I'll miss a call when the phone is in my pocket in a quiet location, so I know it never rang. And then 4 hours later, I'll get a notification about the voicemail. Ditto texts.

I got everyone to switch to my GV number, and now I'm getting them all to switch back, because I just can't handle the (occasional) lack of immediacy.

Do you have that problem at all?

I only have any of the problems you mention when I put my phone into airplane mode or generally have no reception- sometimes I'll get a notification way after I get reception again. Otherwise, I have no immediacy problems.

I have this problem with GV texts, voicemails, and Google Hangouts in general. :(

I use Plivo to forward calls and sms for 2 of my old phone numbers. One is a US # and one is Canadian #. You don't have to program it to forward, you could very easily code an autoresponder type thing.

Here's some code to get you started: https://github.com/dannysu/plivo-forward-ruby

I also used Twilio and Anveo before. Both of those should work too.

You can park either number by creating a new Google account and porting the number to Google Voice on that account. No SMS autoresponder but you could set up a voicemail message.

I think you can have Google Voice email your texts to you, so you might be able to setup an autoresponder that way.

you can park your number at twilio for about a dollar a month. It gives you a full api to pretty much program whatever response/forwarding etc. you want.

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