So...

I sprang for Nextel post merger, but before my Cingular contract was up. Been a blue boy for a while and cingular's constant neglecting of its merged customer base pissed me off.

Well in October that all ends and I officially dump the Orange menace. The problem though, I've given a lot of people my new nextel number and a lot of business contacts my ATT/Cingular one. So it means I need both numbers or begin the tedious process once again to move everyone to a new number. Plus why give up a possible business expense and hold onto a number I can keep for a while?

Unfortunately I guess this doesn't happen often because Nextel's CS said "Whoa, you are trying to do what???" I honestly didn't think much of it and that it would be as easy as adding a line. You would think this would occur more than once in a year to CS especially with the new porting rules, but their lack of knowledge proved otherwise

Then I found out what they wanted to add a single line to my account after getting a supervisor on the phone... 29 bucks?!?!?! I said you have to be kidding, that's over half of my entire monthly bill with you. They wouldn't be getting anything other than a phone number to say point to an existing nextel line. The minutes aren't shared, nothing except for that extra line to dial... Just kind of sucks ya know?

Well, the company I work for just became a phone company and we are doing things very different, VOIP only... Since we are only in Washington state, I can't port my Oregon number to them, but I did think of a way to do it and for less than 10 bucks per month.

I went out there and compared VOIP services to see who could forward and do it most inexpensively. Only one phone company is out there that allows a port and has unlimited incoming minutes for under 10 bucks and that is Sunrocket. www.sunrocket.com. Everyone else wants 15 or more to do a simple forward. Best of all is I can unplug their little voip device once I get it as calls can forward without things being plugged in.

Sunrocket makes the money off of the call handoff so they get some cash for it and Nextel gets their cash for my minutes and ultimately terminating the call. So much I can do with this now, including keeping that number and forwarding it to my business line during business hours, turning the forward completely off on the weekends and more. That to me is an ultimate business tool.

I wanted any thoughts on this strategy, and to offer up a suggestion to those who need multiple numbers to go to them personally.