I recently migrated my entire family from Verizon to Virgin Mobile and so far it's a mostly positive experience, especially since I'm saving $70/month, despite the corporate discount I had with Verizon.
I was disappointed to discover that I can't use Google Voice's automatic transcription of voicemails (which I used on Verizon with my Droid Eris), since Virgin Mobile doesn't support forwarding of calls.
Since we Virgin Mobile customers have no contract, I think this might be a good time to port my number to Google Voice. I.e., I'd wait until near the end of my prepaid month, pay Google $20 to port my number and then get a new number (with my existing LG Optimus Slider) from Virgin Mobile. Then I'd forward my Google Voice number to my new Virgin Mobile #, and I'd get my transcribed voicemails. It would also give me the possibility to automatically route calls from my cell phone to home or office.
Has anyone out there done this with Virgin Mobile? Potential downsides include being without phone service for a few days, and having two potential points-of-failure in my phone service, i.e. both Google Voice and my phone provider (Virgin Mobile for now). Also to avoid people seeing my new number, all my outgoing calls would need to be placed via Google Voice. This doesn't seem so attractive, and I'm concerned about the resulting call quality and coverage issues.
There's no good opportunity to save money here by placing fewer calls over the VM network, since I'm on the $35 plan and will never come close to using my 300 minutes anyhow.
I was disappointed to discover that I can't use Google Voice's automatic transcription of voicemails (which I used on Verizon with my Droid Eris), since Virgin Mobile doesn't support forwarding of calls.
Since we Virgin Mobile customers have no contract, I think this might be a good time to port my number to Google Voice. I.e., I'd wait until near the end of my prepaid month, pay Google $20 to port my number and then get a new number (with my existing LG Optimus Slider) from Virgin Mobile. Then I'd forward my Google Voice number to my new Virgin Mobile #, and I'd get my transcribed voicemails. It would also give me the possibility to automatically route calls from my cell phone to home or office.
Has anyone out there done this with Virgin Mobile? Potential downsides include being without phone service for a few days, and having two potential points-of-failure in my phone service, i.e. both Google Voice and my phone provider (Virgin Mobile for now). Also to avoid people seeing my new number, all my outgoing calls would need to be placed via Google Voice. This doesn't seem so attractive, and I'm concerned about the resulting call quality and coverage issues.
There's no good opportunity to save money here by placing fewer calls over the VM network, since I'm on the $35 plan and will never come close to using my 300 minutes anyhow.