I’ve had the same cellular phone number for ten years. Recently, I had moved and decided that I wanted a local number but I didn’t want to lose my old number either.
The obvious answer would be to get a new local number added to my phone since its a feature that is available on the cellular network and on my phone. Unfortunately, no carrier in the US supports this feature as far as I know.
So after lots of research, I decided to port my old number to T-Mobile using their pre-paid To-Go service. You can buy an activated prepaid SIM off of Ebay that includes one month of service with about 150-minutes of credit. Not bad for about $10 including shipping. Just slide it into a GSM phone you have lying around.
You can add an additional 12-Months of service and 1,000 minutes with a $100 refill card.
Now to get your number moved over – T-Mobile will port your old number for free. Just call T-Mobile’s customer service line at 1-800-T-MOBILE.
So after spending $10 for the SIM, and $100 for the refill card we’re talking roughly $8 a month to park your old number… and you still have over 1,100 nation-wide minutes of talk time you can spend. Furthermore you also retain the ability to send and receive SMS messages. What a deal!
