I know I've read about this in the forum but after quick search came up blank to find that prior advice to someone else.

Right now we have bundled DirecTV, internet, and home phone. Our bill keeps creeping up and we really don't need a home phone anymore so my spouse wants to drop it.

Is there a way to keep our home number outside of paying AT&T. The basic phone cost is $29 but grows to $42 with fees/taxes!

Do you mean replace your AT&T landline with another provider, but keep the same #? I don't see a way to do that. Then again, I haven't had a landline in 15 years, so perhaps someone else with more direct experience will chime in.

If you mean you want to completely drop the land line and get a cell phone with that #, then I also don't see how that can be done.

In a prior post someone had a way to move your home number to something on the internet?

We finally dropped our ATT land line finally too as it jumped up again. I have ATT Wireless so I could have had the home phone number assinged to an added wireless number but that would have cost another $20 a month. I don't miss the constant barrage of phone calls from telemarketers to our deceased land line and being on the no call list for years did not seem to help much.

We decided to just give up our decades old wired phone number and updated everything to our wireless phone numbers. You could contact your wireless proivder and see what they say but probably doubltful.

You should be able to port your number to any new supplier of phone service, be it land line or VOIP.

First key thing to remember DO NOT CANCEL the local land service first, wait until you have ported it elsewhere.

Sign up with whatever carrier you want and port the number over from ATT they can't stop you from moving it per law.

The thing you need is a new carrier, you could even port it to a cell phone, use Mint Mobile, a cheap older cell phone like a used Iphone 7, keep it on a charger and port the number there, or some VOIP carrier

If you have cable internet, see what the cost is for bundling local line and cable, port the number to them.

How to port a land line to Google Voice

How to port a land line to a cell

To keep your number you will need a cell phone to have it "ported to" There are quite a few articles available on the web that talk about this. Too many to link for you but just google "keep phone number when dropping a landline"

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:

How to port a land line to Google Voice

How to port a land line to a cell

Before I went through the hassle of double-porting to google voice, research 'SIP' VOIP providers. Some are really cheap, 911 only, etc. It used to be $2-3/month for 911-only. I'd say $10/month + ~$50 for VOIP adapter would get you a full-featured home phone (voicemail, callerID, etc) You could also skip a VOIP-landline adapter & just have the home # forward to your cellphone(s).

I used 2x Obi100s for a long time as a 'batphone' for the wife-to-MIL in MX before unlimited cell calling. I had a google voice number attached to it for local calls until GV & Obi stopped playing nice (not ported in, just chosen at random). It was $80 well spent. With the GV, I could call the Obi from outside the country, then pass through to the GV to call locally.

I think the newer Obi devices support GV again, but I haven't looked it them in years.

We ported our landline to the VoIP provider Callcentric. I bought a ObiHai ATA (Analog Terminal Adapter), configured it for the Callcentric service, disconnected the house phone wiring from "AT&T"s demarc interface, plugged the Obi ATA into a phone jack, and all the phones just worked they way they always had--except now the 2-line phones had two lines.

We pay $23/month for two lines; unlimited incoming calls; 1,000 minutes of outgoing calls to the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico, and an international calling plan that makes calling all over most of the world dirt cheap. Plus a buck a month for SMS on one of the lines, just for grins

I just reviewed the outgoing usage for all of 2021. Average appears to be ±270 minutes/month of outgoing calls. Highest was 470 minutes for one month. So I could knock $6/month off the bill by dropping our outgoing plan to 500 minutes, drop another $3/mo. for the second line--which isn't much used, and the $1/mo. for the SMS on that line, thus reducing that $23/mo. to $13/mo.

I should probably drop the outgoing call plan to 500 minutes, at least. $6/mo. is $6/mo.

There we go. I knew there'd be plenty of folks here who knew more than I.

As noted above, porting your number to a new provider is pretty routine. However, you cannot keep your number if you drop your provider without signing up with a new one first. I usually recommend voip.ms for a very low-cost VoIP provider where you can park your number at minimal cost. Voip.ms charges a minimal monthly fee (like $0.85 per "line" IIRC), and per usage ($0.01/minute for both "local" and "long distance" calls, International rates are country-dependent), details are at their website. We pay less than $100/year total for three lines that have very low usage.

If you have your number ported to them, you can configure it to forward incoming calls to your cell phone (or whatever), or you can acquire a SIP handset (connects to your network, not the old telco circuits), an ATA (Analog Terminal Adapter - translates VoIP into old-style telco connections permitting use of your existing phones with the VoIP provider) or use a "softphone" (software SIP phone running on a computer, tablet, or smartphone) to place and receive calls through the VoIP provider.

Another useful feature provided by voip.ms is their "digital receptionist," a user-configurable automated "operator" that can coach callers to the appropriate destination (e.g. "press one to reach Alice, two to reach Brandon, and three to reach Charlie, press four to leave a voice mail, if this is a marketing call, press five and hang up immediately.")

Voip.ms has extensive help pages at their website, several of which expressly address porting of numbers.

I have a 3 story townhome that I work from so I keep a landline. I use 1Voip as my service & when I ported over from AT&T copper to fiber internet was able to keep my number. $30 a month gives me unlimited US & unlimited overseas service. It is the most expensive 1Voip plan but I talk several hours a month to Europe. No cell phone service puts a phone on all 3 floors & my garage. No cell phone gives me free oversea's calls.

Thank you all so far!

We ported our ATT landline to google voice. Small fee if I recall. Still give out that number. It can be set to forward the call or record it as text and send email notification. No charge after set up and reduces spam calls to cell phones. Any caller not leaving a message and we don't recognized number gets added to google spam list. Definitely set up before cancelling land line

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
You should be able to port your number to any new supplier of phone service, be it land line or VOIP.

First key thing to remember DO NOT CANCEL the local land service first, wait until you have ported it elsewhere.

Sign up with whatever carrier you want and port the number over from ATT they can't stop you from moving it per law.

The thing you need is a new carrier, you could even port it to a cell phone, use Mint Mobile, a cheap older cell phone like a used Iphone 7, keep it on a charger and port the number there, or some VOIP carrier

If you have cable internet, see what the cost is for bundling local line and cable, port the number to them.

How to port a land line to Google Voice

How to port a land line to a cell

Yep. It's called porting as you say. When we dropped our landline in the 1990s, we kept the number as everybody we knew know the number. So we ported it to AT&T and it became my wife's cell phone number.

When we move cell phone services, we also ported the number to the new provider otherwise you get a new number.

Probably the cheapest place to hold onto a number is to use it for a tablet with internet service. iPad internet service with T-Mobile is $10/mo, IIRC, and is a good place to park a number.

Porting it to Google Voice gives you great flexibility. You can forward a Google Voice number to any phone(s) that you own. Monthly charge for Google Voice is zero.

We parked ours at Number Barn. I wanted to port it to Google but it was just to big a hassle.

If you happen to have a spare phone laying around, then search for the instructions on porting land line to google. (Basically set up month to month cell service with a carrier and port land line to carrier. Go a month or so then port to Google. Can't port a land line directly to Google.)

Just go to where you want the number and tell them you want to port it to your phone.

Did not have AT&T but we ported our landline number to Ooma.

When AT&T dropped landline service in our area I just went with Verizon Fios for TV and internet service and they let me keep my same number. It was as simple as that. I think I remember they even contacted AT&T and made the switch for me.