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30th December 2018, 02:09 PM
#1
Keeping a US phone number in NZ
Hi. My wife and I are moving from Seattle to Wellington in a few weeks, and I'm looking at options for keeping our current US landline phone number. I've found that there are numerous VOIP providers here in the states (such as Voip.ms, CallCentric, and PhonePower) which provide good service in the US, but it's hard to tell how they'll actually work from Wellington. I've looked at Voip.ms the most, and see that their closest point of presence (POP) is in Melbourne, and I don't know how well that's going to work. Does anyone have good recommendations/experience with using a VOIP provider to host a US number in NZ?
I did buy an OBITalk 202 ATA, so I at least am set in the hardware department.
I'm aware of Skype, but it's not a candidate for this because they don't port numbers.
I'm also looking at porting my cell phone to Google Voice, but I've read conflicting information on whether GV requires an active US number. I'd be satisfied if I could just park my cell number there and use SMS.
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30th December 2018, 06:45 PM
#2
Wish I could help here, but we didn't even have a landline in the US! It's intriguing that Apple has released (or is about to release? I forget) a phone that has dual SIMs, which would make it easier to have both a US number and an NZ number, but there is not yet support in the NZ network for this to work. Maybe someday. We went ahead and let our US numbers lapse, although there was a transitional time where we were paying for both. The only calls we ever got to the US number were spam, so we let it go after about half a year. The people who would call us all knew to use WhatsApp or Facetime, which are free from iPhone to iPhone, or over wifi, as I understand it. I still need to check with all our credit cards and whatnot to make sure , but they all seem to use email.
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31st December 2018, 07:58 AM
#3
We ported our numbers to google voice. It works great! We can make and receive calls using "Hangouts Dialer", get our text messages (and send), and when we go to the US we just pop in a prepaid sim or buy a NZ roaming plan and carry on as usual. Makes working with US banks much easier by keeping a US number.
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31st December 2018, 08:58 AM
#4
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