Anyone Ported Their Cell Number to Google Voice?

[consultant]

I'm considering porting my cell number to my Google Voice account to use the Google Voice Call Screener app. I have a few questions for other Google Voice user's that have done this.

1) I assume when you do so, your cell carrier automatically give you a new number when the port completes? Correct? (As this is basically the same as porting to another cell carrier and that's been my experience.)

2) Aside from the call screener and voicemail spam filter, I would guess that another big benefit of doing this is that whenever changing cell carriers, now you don't have to port your phone number any more! (Which sometimes is a hassle if you don't get your billing zip, or security code right)

3) I read that after porting if you forward the SMS messages to your cell number, when you reply in the phones SMS app (not Google Voice), your number shows up as your Google Voice number, not the number assigned to the cell phones SIM card. I didn't think that was possible as then you could never send texts coming from the carrier assigned phone number. So is this article correct or in error?

https://www.howtogeek.com/92075/how-to-port-your-phone-number-to-google-voice/
"You can, however, have Google Voice forward texts to your new number. When you reply to them using your regular messaging app, they will appear to come from your Google Voice number"

4) What's the reliability been like to pipe all your calls through Google Voice and forward to your carrier number? (I want to do this as I want to take advantage of some apps that screen/provide information about incoming phone calls that the Google voice can do.)

5) What no-answer/reject call number do you configure your phone to use? (This is where you type in some codes into your phones keypad so it doesn't foward to your cell carrier's voicemail) It seems like you can't use your ported number as then you would create a loop? Or does Google Voice recognize it's not the same caller calling again and that it's a decline/no answer?

 

[A bochur]

1) in my experience, when you port your number to Google voice, your current sim card just gets cancelled and you'd have to get a new one to have data and forwarding work. The fact that your sim card gets cancelled is mentioned in the article you posted and why would your current carrier give you a new number? Imagine porting from att to verizon, why should att give you a new number? The fact that you ported out shows that you want nothing to do with them. Obviously still good to check with your carrier especially if you have a contract.

2) my reason for porting was for international travel so i don't know much about the spam filter etc. But it's definitely good for switching carriers

3) I've never seen the option to send SMS from your regular sms app and it will appear as if it came from your GV number. They do have that for calls, it's a setting that you can enable that phone calls started from your phone app will appear as your Google voice number but for sms i haven't seen that.

4) when people call me, i haven't had a time that it didn't forward to my carrier number. So that seems reliable. The only thing is, when you're making an outgoing phone call you have to have mobile data working as it uses internet so start the call and then the rest of the call is over regular cellular network. I've had times when i couldn't use my GVN to call and had to call from the regular cellular network.

5) good question. I somehow never thought of that. The answer is as soon as you configure that calls should be forwarded to you Google somehow addition automatically inserts their voicemail system and so you don't actually have to configure anything. When someone calls you and you don't answer, it will go to the Google voicemail and say the Google subscriber you called is not available etc. And this voicemail will be sent to the Google voice app.

 

[A bochur]

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