Does anyone know of a phone service that will let you keep your phone number but put it strait to voice mail?

Question

My bf has to move but he doesn't want to lose his phone # he does a lot of business on his # but is moving to a different suburb so he won't be able to keep this #, unless he can put it in a voicemail mode. I am looking for a provider that will let him put his house number into voicemail at reasonable rate. Thanks

Answer 1

If he is willing to change phone service providers, he may be able to have his old number "ported" to his new phone service provider.  But this has to be arranged "before" moving to new service provider.

Otherwise, you may be able to do this with VoIP, without actually having to have a VoIP phone.

Here is how:

Subscribe to a "low-cost" VoIP service that supports LNP (local number portability).  Two such companies I use are InPhonex and CallCentric (links through my profile).

With CallCentric, for example, you can have your phone number "ported" to their service as a DID (direct inbound dialling) phone number.  Then set the account to "Forward" all incoming calls either to Voice-Mail or Forward directly to Any phone number you specify.  Voice-mails are forwarded to your email account for on-line access, too.  Or, listen to them through your web account portal.

I am currently doing this with one of my numbers because we are getting ready to move.  So, all calls from one number is being forwarded to the other number.

These services are low cost and Pay-As-You-Go.  No contracts, no gimmicks or fine print.

Answer 2

He should see if he can transfer the house number to a cell phone but make sure the cell phone company isn't going to charge him roaming. If he wants he can get the minimum plan that doesn't have roaming charges and just leave it turned off and then just call his voice mail from another phone.  Depending on where he's moving to maybe that area has an unlimited calling plan on a cell phone like boost or metro pcs so that it won't cost him a fortune to check the other voice mail all the time. Also maybe he could get unlimited long distance on a house phone. Again these unlimited options would just be so that he can check the voice mail of the cell with the old number that he transfered from his bussiness phone.