How to get a 603 Google Voice phone number

Mon Sep 1 16:23:23 EDT 2014

For few years now, I wanted to get a 603 phone number on a beloved google's service Google Voice. Every once in a while, when bored, I'd hit voice.google.com and check availability of a 603 phone number, just to see a familiar "There are no 603 area code numbers available at this time." Seldom, I would try to actually attempt to port my 603 regular cell phone number with same results... until one day Google let me port my number!

As an aside, I'd like to say that the reason I eagerly wanted to move my favourite 603 number of last 10 years was because of T-Mobile. At one point I moved between few carriers just to return to T-Mobile. They said my phone number is gone. After long argument, they managed to return me my original phone number. More on how T-Mobile can loose your phone number is at the end of the article.

So, to the point, below is how to move your phone number to Google Voice:

• switch your current plan to pre-paid T-Mobile;
• go to voice.google.com and choose to port your phone number;
• pay $20 to google;
• wait 24-48 hours and it's done.

Note that this has only been verified on T-Mobile pre-paid. It has been verified that Sprint will not allow you to do the same operation.

Once successful, return to your T-Mobile local store and request a new sim card for your pre-paid account. What happened to me at this step was T-Mobile mistakenly gave me someone else's phone number. I've got few phone calls from original owner of this temporary and throw-away (for me) phone number. The person said she'd talk to T-Mobile herself.

So all in all, this operation costs you about $30 ($20 Google's fee and $10 T-Mobile's fee).