Port your mobile number to Google Voice = $20

[13Gigatons]

I'm not sure what the advantage of this is....if it worked for land-line numbers then it would be great.

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.

I understand the risks associated with porting my number to Google Voice and want to continue with the porting process.

 

[gorcorps]

Interesting... This would be good for those who want to move to google voice exclusively without having to tell hundreds of people your new number.

 

[CycloWizard]

I've been using Google Voice for over a year now. I got a number which is local for my parents so they can call me for free. The audio quality has been seriously degraded in recent months to the point where it's often unintelligible, so I have to hang up and call them back. I'm not sure how that's possible, given that all of the signals involved should be digital (I think), but it is a recurring problem for me. Just a heads-up.

 

[Anubis]

having to eat the ETF and then sign back up will keep many from doing this but provided the quality doesn't go to hell sounds like a great thing to do when you are up for renewal

 

[Zap]

Dang, wish they ported landline numbers.

 

[cronos]

The only thing that's keeping me from doing this is the fact that Google Voice still doesn't have a reliable service for international text messaging. As soon as they fix this I'll have at least two lines that I'm porting in.

Edit:
So where is this article posted? The Google Voice FAQ still showing that this service is unavailable

Although you can't currently port your existing number to Google Voice, we hope to offer this option in the near future. Please tell us if this is a feature you'd like to see in Google Voice

 

[hans007]

also is there any way to port your number out of google? say microsoft came out with something like it some day?

i used to work at thsi company called efax, and we loved it whenever someone ported their fax number to us, because it basically locked them in as a customer forever.

 

[Cstefan]

The VQ has been terrible for me also, no thanks.