Help with phone issues please

[jfbookers]

I am about to retire even more so and close my office, I would however like to keep my business phone number active for some time. I am also considering giving up my land line at home.
Currently my family has three cell phones on a family plan which works reasonably for us. I can add two numbers for $10.00 per month each.
I have done some research and developed the following possible solutions.

1, Transfer my business number to an additional cell line and keep the home land line for occasional faxes,

2. Buy a call forwarding device like OBi110 Voice Service Bridge and VoIP to work with a Google voice account.

3. Just continue to pay the phone company to forward my calls to my cell.

I am not a expert and could use some help on these solutions or suggestions about another path to accomplish my goals.

Thanks in advance tuggers

Yours,
Jim

 

[AwayWeGo]

Magic Jack.

For a few bux extra when you sign up, Magic Jack lets you keep your old familiar phone number.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[isisdave]

Google "park my phone number" and "port my phone number".
I'm about to try parknblend.com .
There are negative reviews about parkmyphone
Prices vary all over the place. Some services only provide voice mail; others offer forwarding. Some are unlimited and some offer 100 or 200 minutes a month for fees ranging from $3 to $12.

If you don't expect many calls, it's hard to beat an additional cell number on a family plan. You don't even need an actual phone if all you want is voicemail.

 

[tompalm]

your best deal is transferring to a cell phone, but Magic Jack is even better if you can get by with leaving your computer on all the time, or returning calls when you miss them while the computer is off.

 

[UWSurfer]

your best deal is transferring to a cell phone, but Magic Jack is even better if you can get by with leaving your computer on all the time, or returning calls when you miss them while the computer is off.

You're not even locked in to leaving a computer running with MJ any longer, they now have out MJ+ which plugs directly into your router or you can plug it into your computer if you want to travel using WiFi. We are using it and it works fine. However, I'm also a big fan of Google Voice and ported our home number over to it & use it to point calls through it to our MJ and cellphone. This way if something happens to MJ or we want to do something different our number isn't stranded with MJ.

MJ isn't the only game in town, NetDuo is another competitor that has a nicer quality piece of hardware and another which appears on Woot from time to time and I just saw at Costco, Ooma is also out there. Vontage is another which got into the game early but has a legacy pricing method that isn't all that attractive compared with these others.

MJ is great in that for most people is works very simply as advertised. The downside is their customer service is not wonderful which is part of the tradeoff for using a low cost alternative phone provider.

GV also provides transcriptions of voice mail left as well as e-mailing the sound file (message) to you. It works out great and may be a good solution for this. I often use GV through my laptop (MacBook Pro) both at home and on the road to make and receive calls. So far the cost for GV is free.

 

[jfbookers]

Thanks

Still looking and reading but your input helps,
Thanks,
Jim