Michael Arrington recently issued this post, which characterizes “number portability” as the “secret weapon” for Google to popularize its Google Voice services. Like the NYTimes’ David Pogue, Arrington is a eloquent supporter of Google Voice’s capabilities. Just have a look at this video (although you have to watch an commercial first) as an example.

Single number services are not new and there isn’t much about Google Voice that isn’t offered by other service providers. I remember writing about AccessLine in the pre-VoIP mid-1990s and now I see that you can buy “single number, find me-follow me services in a box” for $15 per month at Costco. The point of Michael Arrington’s post is that while GrandCentral and then Google Voice let you pick a new number to be your single-point-of-contact, it built a real barrier to adoption and use by not enabling you to simply assign an existing number (say your cellphone number) to serve that purpose.

In the U.S., competing wireless (and wireline) carriers won the hard-fought battle for number portability nearly ten years ago. Arrington has learned that Google plans to make “bring your own number” (BYON) a standard feature of Google Voice sometime this year. He says that it will cost him $175 to switch from AT&T (and I’m not sure whether that’s the notorious Early Termination Fee (ETF) that the carrier would charge or that they have assigned an arbitrary $175 switching cost (as carriers are wont to do to keep their customers).

You may be able to signal to Google that you’d like them to accelerate the introduction of BYON to Google Voice by casting a vote here. We’ll monitor developments as the service is refined in the coming months.

Plus we need to add a couple of caveats and a “Great Unknown” to this post. First of all: numbers can only be ported from one carrier to another carrier. Today, the IP-based carrier Level3 does the call handling for Google Voice (hence, many of the calls I receive from friends and associates using Google Voice show from numbers in the 703 numbering plan area (NPA). In the pre-portability days, when NPA’s had geographic relevance, 703 represented the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC where Level3 apparently has its switching center). One scenario would have a Google Voice customer use a so-called “responsible organization (RespOrg) to port a mobile number from his or her present carrier to Level3, treating Google Voice as a “Virtual Network Operator”.

The Great Unknown, in this case, is whether Google is about to make the formal leap into becoming a carrier, for only registered carriers, meaning those with Carrier Identification Codes (CICs) assigned by the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA), can have telephone numbers ported to them. In terms of Google becoming a carrier (or acquiring a carrier), it could happen. But it hasn’t happened yet.

Categories: Articles

Tags: VoIP, Google Voice, single-number-service, number portability