Google Voice Porting — Numbers No, But Voicemail Yes!
I’ve said before how much I’d like to port my primary mobile phone number to Google Voice. Ninety-five percent of my contacts over the past 10 years have that number, so it’s part of my identity at this point. I tried to change that when I got the custom Google Voice number of 262-KCTOFEL, but it’s taking time to catch on in people’s address books. 
Well, you still can’t port a number to Google Voice yet — that’s still in the works — but you can “port” your mobile phone’s voicemail over to Google Voice.
The new feature works with the following carriers at this time: Alltel, AT&T, Cricket Wireless, MetroPCS, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon Wireless. Essentially, you’re providing the Google Voice transcription and notification system access to your voicemail on your existing mobile number. With this option, I have all of my bases covered. Calls to my personalized Google Voice number are obviously handled already by Google’s voicemail. And missed calls directly to my Palm Pre or iPhone 3GS will also get transcribed and recorded. It’s a win-win for me because I don’t have to worry about three different voicemail accounts. On the other hand, Barb doesn’t want to change her number. Using this new option, she can use Google Voice in a limited fashion with her non-Google number.
Google also has a nice chart of the differences between using Google Voice with or without a Google phone number, plus additional information right here.
Something I had read in other comments on this issue led me to believe that Sprint charges for forwarding such as this, at a rate of 20 cents per call? I have a google voice invite just wasting away in my inbox, but I won’t set it up till I have confirmation on this.
From what I’ve read, yes Sprint does charge $0.20 for every forwarded call. Bear in mind that charge is incurred when you forward a call FROM your Sprint number to another phone. If you use that Google Voice invite for example, and forward calls from GV to your Sprint phone, you won’t be charged $0.20 each time. That’s because you’re forwarding TO your Sprint phone, not FROM it. I’m not sure how this will come into play with the Sprint voicemail / Google Voicemail news, but if you have the invite and accept it with a Google Voice number, I don’t see an issue. If you accept it with your existing Sprint number, that may be another story. I recommend calling Sprint to verify your options and potential future charges.
Since the way that this new service from Google works is by changing the “call forward no-answer” and “call forward busy” forwarding numbers to point to Google’s voicemail service instead of Sprint’s own, I’m afraid on this point that it sounds like you are incorrect; unlike the normal Google Voice service we’ve all come to know, where Google call-forwards TO your phone, in this case, your phone is being told to forward calls FROM itself to Google’s voicemail system.
If Sprint truly does charge $0.20/min for call forwarding, then I see no way around that if you want to use this new feature of Voice.
According to Google Voice… Sprint will have free conditional forwarding of calls starting mid-November (meaning calls you ignored or did not pick up will be forwarded). Seems like they are working on agreements to keep it free. Ultimately, I’d check with your carrier.
I just activated this on my iPhone. It is working, and visual vmail on the iPhone is now disabled (never thought there would be anything cooler than that!). However, it takes forever to drop into the GV voicemail though…and I dont see any way to tweak the amount of time until it does.
For clarification, I use a Vonage line for my home office, and use “SimulRing” option that rings both Vonage line and iPhone – I have the Vonage voicemail disabled, and it used to drop into iPhone vmail regardless of what number was called…now it does that with GV…but the amount of rings is a deal stopper if I can’t tweak that (wondering if it is on the Vonage side). Any thoughts?
Kevin – I could be wrong, but I think you get one or the other. I don’t think you can have a google voice number and have it do your voice mail transcription from your non-google voice number – and it is all done at time of setting up Google Voice for the first time. I don’t think existing Google Voice users with a custom number have this additional option. I could be wrong, though, but that is the way I read it.
turns out I’m wrong – as is usually the case – activating Google Voice Mail for each phone number does in fact work for google custom voice phone numbers
“you still can’t port a number to Google Voice yet — that’s still in the works”
I sure hope you are right.. that it’s in the works. Please be sure to update us when/if it ever happens.
Thanks
Tom
@Rob – you can do both. From what I found though, is that you have to turn off forwarding in your GV account to the numbers you selected if you don’t want to create a “loop”. My problem above was corrected when I unchecked the numbers to forward it to…because essentially it was calling my iphone, then calling GV to drop a vmail, but since it was on forward it rand the iphone again, creating a one time loop until it dropped to Vmail (not continuous, but annoyingly long to a caller trying to leave a msg).
thanks for that clarification
looks like there is active google voicemail next to each phone number – that is nice to have that feature and the google custom number, too.
I’m only seeing where it is an option (on my account anyways) to turn it on for my mobile number. Wondering if there would be a way to have GV be the voicemail for my Verizon land line also. Not sure how to do it??
Since the way that this new service from Google works is by changing the “call forward no-answer” and “call forward busy” forwarding numbers to point to Google’s voicemail service instead of Sprint’s own, I’m afraid on this point that it sounds like you are incorrect; unlike the normal Google Voice service we’ve all come to know, where Google call-forwards TO your phone, in this case, your phone is being told to forward calls FROM itself to Google’s voicemail system.
If Sprint truly does charge $0.20/min for call forwarding, then I see no way around that if you want to use this new feature of Voice. OH! You’re my new favorite blogger fyi
Kevin -
Will this work if I already have a Google Voice account and number? Can I still port my native Sprint VM to GV?
-Jericho
Absolutely. Go into the Settings of your existing GV account and hit the Phones section. Next to each phone you have, you’ll see a “Activate Google voicemail for this phone?” option. You can activate it for your native Sprint VM and later deactivate it if you don’t want to continue using it.
Hey Guys
I registered with the “using a non-Google option” option. Do you know if there is a way to change it to “using a Google number” option?
Thanks
Want all of google voice features for minimal cost? Sign up for a remote call forwarding service like les.net or xebba.com. Port your cell phone number over to them. Have that number forward to your Google Voice Account. then have google voice call you on your new cell phone # you have set up with your provider. Google voice will take all of your calls, and you will have all of the benefits.
Unknown to most, you can call AT&T customer service and request they change the time it takes calls to go to your voicemail. If you choose the minimum (6 seconds, I think but might be zero), the call will go almost immediately to your Google Voice number. From there, GV can loop back to your phone then capture the voice message if you choose not to answer. The flow looks like this: 1. mobile phone call (1 ring) 2. transfer to GV 3. GV calls your mobile number (2-4 more rings) 4. you don’t answer, allowing GV to take and transcribe the message.
Total rings to voicemail, 2-5…pretty acceptable.
Google Voice Service Takes Aim At Telephone Companies: It converts voice mails to text, and even better…nice article