Porting Into the 21st Century

 

A.I. Generated Artwork

For many years, I've put off a task that I know I shouldn't but just couldn't bring myself to do. I needed to upgrade my electronics to the 21st century. By that I mean I still have a landline phone, coaxial cable television that also services our internet, all in one bundle. In order to get better services that met our needs, I would need to unbundle things and align various services to all work together providing similar services at a much cheaper price, hopefully. But sometimes it is just easier to go on the past of least resistance, which in my case was to write an increasingly larger check for my bundled services.

Then out of the blue, a fiber optic cable started laying conduit for their cables in my town, then my area and even right through my front yard. According to their website, come spring, I will be able to have a CHOICE for my internet services for the first time since living here. I decided that I would be ready for spring when my time arrived.

The first step is dealing with the landline phone. I need it for two reasons. First, by using it as our primary phone number for all forms, accounts, services, it prevents our cellphones from getting bombarded with spam calls. Our landline, set on mute and going directly to voicemail, gets perhaps 25 calls a day, especially right before our caucus night as I right this. Second, my wife needs a line out that doesn't have her personal cellphone number on it since she calls patients directly at times. When a doctor's cellphone number gets distributed in public, there is nothing good that comes of it.

So I looked into switching it to Google Voice. My understanding is that I could port any phone number to Google Voice and then set it up to email me transcripts of any phone messages. This was perfect for my needs. It would allow me to remove the phone services from my previously mentioned bundle which then could allow me to choose an alternate internet provider who doesn't have such things. But and there is always a but, I apparently couldn't import a landline number to Google Voice, only a cellular number. 

Some quick research showed that there was a work around involving me porting my landline number to a cellular number using a cheap provider called Tello and then once there, I could port it to Google Voice for a one time fee. The YouTube video directions were clear and concise and though the video itself is only a few minutes long, the actual process still took me several weeks for various drawn out reasons which I will skip here. But finally I apparently have a landline number that now resides on an app on my phone and will email me transcripts of any phone messages left. 

Step two will be to wait for the fiber optic fellows to arrive in the spring and get signed up with them. 

Step three will be to ditch my cable and go to streaming as almost all my peers have long since done. I could do that now but my internet provider provides download limits which would turn my already very expensive bill even more expensive by a factor of two or three times. For that much money, I'll wait a few months longer. 

Step four will be to bundle up all that electrical refuse that now clutters my office desk, the electronics nook of the kitchen and the armoire holding our television and haul it downtown to the former captive provider and tell them where to stick it.