Tried contacting FreeUp via email to ask questions about porting, but they must be short handed and haven’t replied yet. Does anyone know if you can port in your phone number after you try their service, or is a new sim necessary?
Small, quirky MVNOs with disruptive business strategies are fun and exciting, but they also have a habit of dying painful and untimely deaths.
Never entrust your "real" phone number to a company that can disappear at any time.
I would suggest porting your number to Google Voice and then integrate it with whatever random number that FreeUp has given you.
If they ever disappear you can quickly and easily get another phone with another company with another random phone number and install Google Voice on that one, too.
Quick, easy, and painless.
Thanks, Chelle! Will make sure we follow that wise advice.
Yes definitely port to google voice. People who ported to cellnuvo back in those dark times of 2017 regretted it when some lost their numbers or had them unavailable for months. Those who ported to google voice were happy!
If your phone number is important to you, then follow Chelle's advice. But since you ask, I answered. From my memory, porting to FreeUp was pretty easy. Ordered the sim card, then when you activate it, it'll give you 2 options: Want new number or port-in your number, then follow what it asks of you. How fast the porting process depends on your cell carriers. Mine ported in fairly quickly. So far, I've been very happy with FreeUp!
As far as I'm aware no one has reported porting in their number after trying FU, so a new sim would likely be required. The FU FAQs seem to imply this as well.
"Transfer an existing number (Porting)
Yes, you can port your existing number to FreeUP Mobile, as long as your number is still in active status with your current service provider. Any balance or unused minutes from your old service provider account cannot be transferred to your FreeUP account. Be sure to check with your current service provider to make sure there are not any early cancellation fees. More Information on Porting your number: Most, but not all numbers can be moved from provider to provider. You will be asked to provide FreeUP Mobile with information about your account with your current service provider. FreeUP Mobile will submit a request asking your current service provider to release/port your number to FreeUP. The current service provider will then review the information you have provided, and if that information matches, they will release the number to FreeUP Mobile. Most ports will complete within 20 minutes to 1 business day, but sometimes it may take up to 3 business days to complete the porting process.
Key Porting Facts: The Number you are porting MUST be in an 'Active' status with your current carrier, or the port will not process.
Please DO NOT activate your Phone or SIM with a new FreeUP number while the port is in process. Doing so would result in port failure. For customers with SIM cards this would also likely require the purchase of a new SIM card to complete the port process.
Any Balance remaining on your account with your previous service provider will NOT carry over to your new FreeUP account, even though it will be the same phone number.
If you have a contract with your old service provider, you may be responsible for an Early Cancellation Fee, or other fees, mandated by the contract. Please check with your old service provider before porting your number, if you are unsure of these terms.
Please carefully review all of the information you entered when filling out the porting form, before submitting the Port Request. If any information does not match what your old service provider has on record, they will deny the port."
Yes. Unlike some other AT&T MVNOs where you can only do a port-in on initial signup, you can port in a number to FreeUp to replace an existing line. However, you have to order a new SIM.
If you port to google voice I know your incoming calls will be forwarded to your Freeup number but what about 'outgoing calls? when I dial out with my free up phone, how do I get it to show my google voice number?
Use Google Voice app to place calls with GV# as outgoing caller ID.
On Android, there is a setting for phone native dialer to use Google Voice app automatically for outgoing calls.
See section "Use Google Voice number for calls from phone's app":
It should be simple. If you have the Google Voice app installed on your phone, go into settings on the app( 3 parallel lines in search bar )and then scroll down to where it says "Calls started from this device's phone app", tap on it and an option page will appear where you can choose how you want to use your GV # when calling from the phone app---Yes (all calls)--- NO---- Select number before each call, etc. I think this feature can only be set on your individual phone(s) from the GV app, and not from the GV desktop website.
Seriously, once you spend a little while to understand/figure out the settings, this is pretty easy and straightforward in use.
Calling, both inbound and outbound, is transparent & takes no effort or special procedure..
Texting is what catches me sometimes, when I forget to use the GV app for outbound texts & use the native app instead-- if you do that, the other person sees the text as coming from an unknown (to them) number.
Thanks for the help folks! One other question, does any part of using Google Voice require data? (like Hangouts does)
Yes. GV requires tiny bits of data to place the first phone call you make to a specific number, in order to create a 'spoofed' number that GV actually uses. (This is completely invisible to you, other than seeing that number in some incoming texts......)
I believe GV also uses data for texting.
No data is used for voice-- that uses your native cellular plan. (but see note below)
Unfortunately, I just changed my data SIM today, or I would share my GV data use for the last month. I made a few phone calls today (maybe 15 minutes?), and sent 5 texts, and GV used 11.2 kb of data.
(Note: GV now allows calling via WiFi or cellular data if you prefer and allow it in settings. It's not a requirement to do so.)
Yes (either Wifi or cellular data).
You can restrict GV calls to carrier voice only, but a small amount of data is used to initiate each outgoing call.
In-app voicemail and messaging use data.
You can receive native SMS notifications of GV voicemail messages.
It is possible to use native messaging app for GV SMS. The way this works is your "contact" is assigned a number for GV that is different than their actual number, but on their end everything looks normal.
See: Forward text messages or voicemail: Forward voicemail transcripts - Computer - Google Voice Help
Thanks to everyone for your help. I was able to port my number from Red Pocket to Google Voice. It took 24 hours and cost 20 bucks but now my number is safe. I now use a FreeUP sim with the 10 dollar plan (which I get for free by printing coupons) and everything seems to be working fine. Calls, texts, MMS, data, voicemail etc. I was able to integrate my phone dialer with Google voice and I'm glad because the regular phone dialer has a dark theme I like but the Google Voice Dialer is blindingly white! However I can't get Textra to be default for my Google voice SMS app without some very involved work arounds, so I'm using the Google Voice app for SMS and hoping they will eventually add a dark theme for it and allow you to increase the font (59 year old eyes don't work like they use to)
Glad it was a smooth transition for you. You might take a look at the Google "Messages" app for SMS, which to my eyes has a beautiful dark theme as an option.
I'm about to start FreeUp so I was reading FreeUp threads. Can someone please explain what does "integrate" mean here? Does it mean 'tell GV to ring it up'?
Yes.
Integrate means to have all calls to your GV # forwarded to the number FreeUp gives you so that if FU should go belly-up you will not have to worry about porting your number out or losing your number because your GV # will not be affected in any way and will always remain in your Google account. Having a Google voice number is like having an answering service person who answers all calls to your GV# number and then calls you or transfers the call to whatever phone with whatever number you currently have in your possession. When someone calls your GV #, you could, if you had 4 phones with different numbers supplied by different MVNOs , set it up so that GV would send the call to and ring all 4 phones simultaneously.
Thank you Isamorph!