Yep, I finally  made the switch to using Google Voice as my primary number.  My cell phone number hasn’t changed though, I’ve simply paid google the 20$ carrier transfer fee and ported my number over to Google Voice.  No more bills from Sprint.  No more automatic charges.  No monthly bill.  Ever again.  I expect to save 95% of the cost of my cell phone over the next year and lose absolutely none of the functionality.

How is this possible?

I’m up on burners, playa!

It’s really quite simple.  There’s a terrific Android application called GrooveIP that connects to Google voice and lets you make cell phone calls and txts over WiFi.  This lets me txt and make calls wherever there is WiFi signal (my house and work, and coffee shops).  How significant is this?

Very.  If you look back over your cell phone bill for the past year, how many phone calls were made at home?  What about txt messages?  How many were made at work, and how many at home, and how many anywhere else?  This can be a difficult thing to gauge and may require a bit of detective work depending on your bill.  Still, for me it amounted to the vast majority of my phone calls and txts.

As for the other 5% of the time that I need to make calls or send txts while I’m out and about, I simply purchase pre-paid minutes and txt messaging rates at the lowest possible price that month.  Fatwallet is your friend here.  With Google Voice’s ability to auto-forward calls and txts to any number transparently, you can swap burner phones as easily as a few clicks on your computer or even directly from your smart phone.  Winning!