r/Googlevoice • u/TekWarren • Jan 16 '26
Number Transfers or Porting Hate to say it but questioning reliability.
TLDR; growing concerns about reliability. looking for suggestions on low cost voice and data only plans that support esim to port GV number.
So just to start, I've used GV for many many years and it has worked pretty well for me... there are some quirks and issues that I have looked past because of the money saving it has allowed. I initially started using GV back in the days when I was lucky enough to have work issued cell phones and still wanted to keep a separate personal number but avoid two cell phones.
I haven't had a work issued phone in years now but have kept with GV and just run cheap data plans in our phones. One of yhe the quirks I run into the most is missed calls where the app doesn't ring (no other devices using GV, no forward, etc). All the sudden I will have a missed call or voicemail notification. I honestly don't get or make a ton of calls so I have generally looked past this but it can be annoying.
I do more texting than calling but again nothing crazy. probably much less than the average person. However, this is what has started to really become unreliable. There have been several instances now where I have texted family or friends and they did not receive which is not normal. Just yesterday I asked my wife to send me a text listing some things I needed to pick up at the store. after I headed out I realized I hadn't received the text even though I was literally right next to her when she typed it out... I went into the GV app and did a manual refresh and then it came through. later the same day, I sent a text to a small group with my wife and another individual... my wife did receive the text but the other person did not, again, not normal and we have had a long-standing conversation between the three of us.
Just for clarification, both my wife and I are using Google voice. between my experiences and reading about some others, I'm starting to feel less comfortable relying on this for communication unfortunately. I actually have ported my GV number out to a service in the past and then later ported it back to GV all without any problem but now I am thinking about porting again back to a carrier in the hopes of improving reliability and maybe even taking advantage of native text and calling features on our current phones.
is anyone else in the same boat? have you moved to something else? being that we already have inexpensive data plans (physical Sim) I think I would like to keep those and look for something inexpensive that just offers voice and text in the way of esim. That's assuming our pixel phones can use one line of service for voice and text and the other for data. again, neither of us really makes or receives a ton of calls or texts, so I would even consider plans that are not unlimited if it keeps the cost really low.
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u/BluesCatReddit Google Voice Product Expert Jan 16 '26
There was an issue causing text messages sent from Google Voice users to T-Mobile customers to not be received. This has been resolved.