[Wowfunhappy]

What if you need to stop paying for a phone bill entirely though? Maybe you're living paycheck to paycheck and money is just too tight this month. That's what I think GP was talking about.

Is it possible to "park" your phone number until you can start a new plan?

[firefoxd]

It's now possible. I work for a mvno that was recently acquired. We have a $5 pause plan. It has no data, voice or text, it just keeps your line active.

[Semaphor]

Wow. I’d save ~$0.52 (tax included) over my current plan with unlimited voice, and texts, and 5GB data…

[me-vs-cat]

Which provider do you use?

[Semaphor]

https://www.sim.de/ German provider

[firefoxd]

If I compared it to the service provider in Guinea, I can also say that you are overpaying way too much.

[Semaphor]

Germany is not exactly known for cheap plans, but apparently it’s worse in the US and you can only get comparable plans if you pay yearly, which I guess might just barely make a $5 parking contract worth it.

[semiquaver]

Yes, port it to Google voice.

[j16sdiz]

Its Google. They can kill any services with no reason

[abirch]

This wouldn't be surprising. It's sad they've let it atrophy the way that they have. My understanding is that they purchased it to train their digital assistant on the voicemails (where we would correct the transcripts for free)

[Wowfunhappy]

I think that costs $20.

[jasomill]

Yes, as a one-time charge.

Though AFAIK there's no law or contract term preventing Google from starting to charge a monthly fee in the future.

And after some time — for me it was 5+ years, porting from a baby Bell land line to a postpaid T-Mobile family plan for a couple years and then to Google Voice — your number will be tarred and feathered as a "VoIP" number and rejected for identity verification by some parties until it's ported back to a paid service (again, after some time).

Even so, it's nice that Google lets me keep the number I was born with for $0/month for as long as it lasts.

[dannyw]

Google has already killed my sister's business's Enterprise Workspace plan, because they decided to change their mind, and make "unlimited storage" not a thing. She was paying $200/month and they now wanted $1,600/month. I decided to build a NAS for her instead.

This is despite written emails from their support confirming the use case (videography) and storage needs were suitable, and a written statement that she is "permanently grandfathered" once Google stopped offering the plan to new customers.

To make matters worse, they gave her 30 days to download all data before everything would be deleted permanently. This is how Google treats "enterprise" customers.

[froggit]

> your number will be tarred and feathered as a "VoIP" number and rejected for identity verification by some parties until it's ported back to a paid service (again, after some time).

Where things get fun is when Google Voice IS your paid service (e.g. google fiber's phone service, popular with a certain demographic that used POTS for most their life and want to continue having a similarly behaving service).

[eric-hu]

Whatever the cost is, it's one time. I ported a number to Google Voice in 2016 and haven't paid a dime for it since then.

[Marsymars]

You can port your number to NumberBarn and park it for $2/month. Other services probably exist, but I signed up to NumberBarn ages ago and haven't had any issues the handful of times I've used them.

[liminvorous]

Do pre-paid plans not exist in the US?