Gadgetell Guide: Porting a number to a new phone

With the recent advent of the iPhone 3GS and Palm Pre, along with the BlackBerry Tour and the slew of upcoming BlackBerrys, Android handsets and cool not-so-dumb-phones (the upcoming LG Chocolate stands out) there’s a chance you might be looking into buying a new cell phone in the near future. Sure, there’s the contract terminations and fees to worry about with getting a new phone, but there’s also another issue for some people: porting their cell phone number.

Switching carriers

The easy answer to the issue would be to rely on the new carrier to port your number over, but that can only work when transferring from one cell carrier to another one. Perhaps you want to transfer a phone number you have on a landline to your new smartphone, or even from a cell phone to a landline.

Park your number

Here’s where the service NumberGarage can come in handy. With NumberGarage, and other services like it, you can transfer, or port, your number to their service to hold for you until you want to use it again. The number can then be ported to any service you would want to port it to. Or, perhaps you don’t want to put it onto your new phone, you can always pay NumberGarage to forward your calls to your new phone. The only downfall being that it has a monthly fee behind it.

One number to rule them all

Maybe you don’t mind having a new number, but would prefer a number you can use for the foreseeable future. For that, you can always choose to sign-up for and then wait for an invitation to Google Voice. With Google Voice you can sign up for a phone number in nearly any area code you would want to, and have the calls to that number forwarded to any phone you want.

The service does require a new number, but you can choose that number yourself, with Google allowing you to try and find a vanity number when you sign up. If you don’t like that number later on, you can always change it for $10. So while there is a new number that you will have to tell all of your contacts, you can stick with one number for just about any phone you want to use for the foreseeable future.