T-Mobile's 'Digits' Solution Lets You Use One Phone Number Across All Your Devices (theverge.com) 46
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: T-Mobile just revealed its answer to ATT's NumberSync technology, which lets customers use one phone number across all their connected devices. T-Mobile's version is called Digits and it will launch in a limited, opt-in customer beta beginning today before rolling out to everyone early next year. "You can make and take calls and texts on whatever device is most convenient," the company said in its press release. "Just log in and, bam, your call history, messages and even voicemail are all there. And it's always your same number, so when you call or text from another device, it shows up as you." When it leaves beta, Digits will cost an extra monthly fee, but T-Mobile isn't revealing pricing today. "This is not going to be treated as adding another line to your account," said COO Mike Sievert. "Expect us to be disruptive here." And while its main feature is one number for everything, Digits does offer T-Mobile customers another big perk: multiple numbers on the same device. This will let you swap between personal and work numbers without having to maintain separate lines and accounts. You can also give out an "extra set" of Digits in situations where you might be hesitant to give someone your primary number; this temporary number forwards to your devices like any other call. You can have multiple numbers for whatever purposes you want, based on T-Mobile's promotional video.
Google Voice (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes. Google Voice. I've been using it for years. When I travel internationally (outside of T-Mobile's free European roaming), I can call home on a local number with a foreign SIM. "Digits will cost an extra monthly fee...." Don't need it.
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Yes - The only differences I see between this and Google Voice (previously Grand Central) is the multiple number feature and the fact that it isn't free. I'll stick with GV.
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Yup. Love it.
Other than it being free, email/text integration, spam call filtering, and a bunch of stuff like that - it does sound similar.
The one thing I don't like about gvoice is that it won't let me talk on my iPad. I rather suspect that's because of Apple, though - not google. So I'll be interested to see if TMobile supports ipad calling/talking.
Hopefully its not just GV (Score:2)
What I hope this is is the ability to go running and have your smart watch act as your phone. Get in your car and have the car stereo act as a phone. Then switch it back to the mobile phone device. That's something GV does not do or if it does it requires wifi.
The way I understand this to work is that each device's IMEI can be added to the pool for a particular number and you can select on the fly which device(s) are active. In addition they are offering that you can have multiple numbers and multiple I
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What I hope this is is the ability to go running and have your smart watch act as your phone. Get in your car and have the car stereo act as a phone. Then switch it back to the mobile phone device. That's something GV does not do or if it does it requires wifi.
My prius seamlessly transfers my [google voice] iphone calls to and from my phone as I'm starting/stopping the car. It just works.
I've never tried to transfer calls between other devcies - though I feel like it's supposed to work - as long as all those devices support gvoice.
The way I understand this to work is that each device's IMEI can be added to the pool for a particular number and you can select on the fly which device(s) are active. In addition they are offering that you can have multiple numbers and multiple IMEI's pooled between them.
The only thing surprising about this is why, in 2017, this hasn't happened sooner.
Because competition vs. standards.
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Yup. Have used it for years too. It rings all of my devices and filters out spam texts. Also quite nice getting an emailed transcript of voicemails.
-Matt
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Yup. Have used it for years too. It rings all of my devices and filters out spam texts. Also quite nice getting an emailed transcript of voicemails.
-Matt
For those who haven't tried it, you can use google voice as your voicemail for your cell phone without using any of the other features. So you can get voicemail to text for free from google, instead of paying a monthly vig to your carrier... plus you get to keep your voice mail box as it is when you move from carrier to carrier.
It is a nice service, and you can't beat the price. With the text-to-speech and streaming audio, I never dial in to my voicemail account.
Setup under Verizon was a minor league pain
Re:Google Voice (Score:4, Interesting)
google voice PLUS mailinator for phone numbers.
devices and handsets still each use a phone number (plus another if it's a ported number - one of the reasons porting was fucking stupid) even if you're using "one number" (which is probably one not assigned to a device itself, so there's yet another number) across all of them.... so your household has 6 devices, two numbers, both ported. you're using now 10 (6+2+2) numbers not 8.. or the perceived 2.
lets add temporary numbers to the mix and really kill NANP [wikipedia.org] fast. phone numbers have a cooling-off period between customer assignment (6 months to a year, typically). it would be trivial to DDOS the number pool, even, rendering every unassigned phone number unassignable under those rules.
Re: Google Voice (Score:3)
Finally, someone who Gets It(tm)...
The thing is, for this to work, we'd HAVE to make phone numbers at least 16-20 digits to keep the universe of numbers sufficiently sparse to frustrate random dialing attempts.
Personally, I think the NANP area should ultimately go to variable-length numbers... 12 digits for new numbers, 10 digits for legacy and 'gateway' phone numbers [ie, the main number people call to reach a business], and the ability to append up to 10-20 more digits to a 12-digit number [with logic to
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Sooooo, Google Voice? Except GV is carrier independent, and free, so I guess that's what sets it apart.
I actually just tried to sign up for this with GV recently and my only two options were 1) Port my existing number to GV to get free service or 2) pay for GV to be able to keep my number with my current provider. Since I don't want to port my number, I just went with a different company that charges $1 to set it up and $0.01 per minute to accept calls on the new number I wanted.
Why Extra (Score:2)
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Why extra
Because they can, and because people will pay for it. This has nothing to do with their level of expenditure to provide the service. This is the texting of the late 90s early 2000s, it certainly doesn't cost them 25c to transfer a text message, but people would pay it, so that's what they charged.
Yes, and $xxx million to build the system (Score:2)
Yes, that's the demand side of supply and demand. Also, they spend a couple hundred million or whatever building the system nationwide, and recovered that $xxx million plus the interest they paid (or could have received) on that $xxx million, 25 cents at a time. That's the supply side.
AFTER they spent however much to build it, the incremental cost to send one MORE text was low, but they needed to pay off the loan of $xxx million that they used to build it in the first place.
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I would like to know why they are still assigning numbers to devices that can't make use of them.
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The first thing that comes to mind is the ipad line which AFAIK is not able to text or make calls using it's included phone number. I also seem to remember a few air cards over the years that didn't support texting either although I don't remember which ones.
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A data device, without a handset, can still do text messaging.
No, that number cannot be used in that way. Like my iPhone number is (123) 456-7890, and my iPad number is (123) 456-7809. I can't send a text to the latter number, which is why the GP's question makes sense. Why not allow the phone number to be used for data-only connections as well? You don't need to use the voice spectrum
Re: Data Only plan (Score:3)
Because doing otherwise would force them to scrap ss7 with something else, and nobody can agree what that replacement should be, or how to deploy it in a way that allows a gradual phase-in instead of a disruptive & risky instant switch-over.
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Re: Data Only plan (Score:2)
Find a friend with Fi. Transfer number to google voice. Have them get you a data sim. Pay friend monthly for what you use. 1 cent, 1 mb. Hangouts calls use about 1 cent/min.
All my devices? (Score:3)
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In 1996, USWest (before they were Qwest or CenturyLink) gave me One Number service that would ring both my mobile (if it was on) and my land-line (if it wasn't busy) and have a single voicemail box between them.
“Three Numbers for the software kings under the sky,
Seven for the business lords in halls of stone,
Nine for mortal men, doomed to die,
One for the Dark CEO on his dark throne
In the Land of USWest where the Shadows lie.
One Number to rule them all, One Number to find them,
One Number to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In the Land of USWest where the Shadows lie.”
Project Fi (Score:2)
Re:Project Fi (Score:4, Interesting)
I just checked my usage, and on my phone I'm using 2.9GB/month currently, while my tablet is using 9.7GB/month. (And that's for cellular data only, Wi-Fi not included.) Can't check my other two lines right this second, but even if we pretend that they're not using any data at all, I'd already be paying an extra $50/month for Project Fi over my current plan, which allows me to choose my own device (I bought mine retail from Asia using Expansys), and which is fast and reliable almost everywhere I go (literally the only place it has been spotty for me was Austin, Texas, but my friends on other carriers were all complaining about their coverage there too.)
You couldn't persuade me to switch to Project Fi if you tried.
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You also only need a Pixel or Nexus for SIM registration. Most phones seem to work fine with the service otherwise. I used an 2-3yo Nexus to register, and then put the SIM into my Xiaomi Redmi 3 Pro Prime (along with an 80GB microSD).
Account details exposed (Score:2)
Yeaaaaah, you might want to hold off [xda-developers.com] on signing up for that just yet.
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They say it's all fixed, but the fact that they rolled out with such a fairly obvious yet serious bug - especially after recently professing a strong focus on security - doesn't exactly fill my heart with confidence and trust.
But voicemail remains clumsy just the same (Score:2)
Unless each one is converted to text so I can skip all unnecessary messages, and jump to the one which has my ETD at JFK.
Or shall we live with these google voice wannabes? Time to make us excited about technology again.
Howzabout no? (Score:2)
If you think I'm going to use my phone number for everything you've got to rethink you're strategy. At least concerning me. My worry is, 90% of your customers will jump the the "oh hell yeah" phase, completely skippin
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Want more snotnose accounts? Ultimate guitar, yahoo news, reddit
Keep in mind there are at least 6 snotnoses out there, some are skateboarders, one is a priest, one an amatuer guitar player. Been 2-3 years since I've googled snotnose, less than half the hits are me.
iDevices (Score:2)