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Comment by techsupporter | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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

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