I thought I’d share my experience. I basically followed what other people suggested,
- Purchase an AT&T pay-as-you-go sim card kit (https://www.att.com/cellphones/prepaidphones/sim-card-kit-phone-prepaid.html). During the ordering process there will be an option to port a number to the sim card. Select that option and enter your Vonage details. You’ll need to know your Vonage Account Number (this is not the same as your phone number) and your Vonage PIN. This will cost $0.99. You’ll be asked to select a service plan, and it will add a $25 prepay to the plan. Delete the prepay. Check out paying only $0.99.
- Wait for the SIM Card Kit to arrive. 3-5 days.
- Install the SIM Card in an unlocked or AT&T phone. I had some issues with this, as my older phone would not work with the AT&T towers. I ended up calling AT&T for support, and they activated the SIM card and confirmed the port, though we could not get the older phone to work. I eventually installed the sim card in an iphone 5S, and it worked fine.
- Log in to paygoonline and add $10 to your account. You’ll need some money in the account so that you can receive text messages (from Google voice) on the SIM card. $10 is the minimum. If necessary, reset your PIN — it’ll text the phone with a temporary PIN, and you can use that to log in to the site.
- Call AT&T and ask them for the Account Number for your pay-as-you-go SIM card. You can dial 611 from your phone to contact AT&T. The account number is not the same as your phone number. As far as I know, the only way to get this is to talk to a representative. If they ask why you want it, tell them you want to have the option to port your phone and want the necessary information on hand.
- Log into google voice and select the option to port your phone. Google will text you an authorization code to your phone, and you will have to retrieve that code from the phone and type it into google voice. Google voice will need your AT&T account number (which you called AT&T and talked to a rep in the previous step). It did not as me for the PIN number. Google will ask you to pay $20.
- Wait approximately 24 hours and your number should be ported to Google Voice.
- 24 hours after the port to Google Voice, my Vonage account was canceled automatically.
This ended up costing me $30.99 in total, $0.99 for the SIM card, $10 to AT&T for the pay-as-you-go plan, and $20 to Google to port the phone number.
Just wanted to THANK YOU for sharing this, I can report this still works fine in april 2019. It took an extra call to AT&T a few days later, the rep said it’s because Vonage is a “land line” and takes 3-5 days for the port, but she was able to transfer it immediately. The rep told me my actual account number had to be “generated”, I told her I wanted it done because I like to keep complete information about my services all written down. Thanks again!
One addition is you also need to know your account PIN which is the 4 digit PIN you configure when you activated phoneline – its the PIN used while talking to customer rep.
Sometimes google voice might say “number porting for your service provider is not available ” – all it means there is some issue , but retry after couple of days
Thanks for your great instructions. Followed them over the past few days and everything worked smoothly. The port from Vonage to AT&T took about 18 hours. The port from AT&T to Fi required me to get a Fi tech on the line as there was no option to port showing in my fi account. I requested a call and in 2 mins I was talking to someone. I requested a “late port” and he knew what to do. The port was pretty fast as it happened while we were talking on the phone and the call dropped. He called me back at the new ported number.
This article is a bit old, so I’m not sure if that’s my problem trying to do this.
When I try to go to my cart to purchase the SIm card with a $30 prepaid plan, the website puts me into a loop where it says something went wrong.
Any updates to this concept for porting my Vonage land line number over to Google Voice are appreciated.