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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.
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T-Mobile's 'Digits' Solution Lets You Use One Phone Number Across All Your Devices

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  • Google Voice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sbrown7792 ( 2027476 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:06PM (#53443083)
    Sooooo, Google Voice? Except GV is carrier independent, and free, so I guess that's what sets it apart.
    • 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.

      • by gnick ( 1211984 )

        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.

    • by kwerle ( 39371 )

      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.

      • 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

        • by kwerle ( 39371 )

          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.

    • 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

      • 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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:31PM (#53443253)

      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.

    • 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.

  • You aren't using extra minutes or text messages. In fact, you'll be using data from somewhere else freeing spectrum.
    • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

      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, 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.

  • by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:24PM (#53443197) Homepage Journal
    Does this include my (T-Mobile) flip-phone and my home and office VOIP telephones? 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. For the past 15 years, apparently, that would be too advanced of a technology for anyone to offer. Sad.
    • 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.”

  • I already get almost all of this with Project Fi. I can receive calls on any computer; calls are forwarded to any other numbers I want; and so on. The only thing I can't easily do is get temporary numbers. And all of these features don't cost anything extra.
    • Re:Project Fi (Score:4, Interesting)

      by gweilo8888 ( 921799 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @05:52PM (#53443361)
      Shame Project Fi is so badly overpriced in the first place and limited to almost no choice of hardware. I pay $40/line for unlimited voice, texts and data with T-Mobile, with the only catch being that streaming video is throttled to bandwidth sufficient for a 480p feed. With Project Fi, that'd get me a paltry 2GB of data per line before I was paying more than I am now for T-Mobile.

      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.
      • For your usage perhaps. For our usage, Project-Fi is ~$45-$55/mos for two lines, w/ 2GB of data --- and unused data which is usually 1GB or more is refunded every cycle.

        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).
  • Yeaaaaah, you might want to hold off [xda-developers.com] on signing up for that just yet.

    • Yeaaaaah, you might want to read where the article says that problem was already fixed.
      • by phorm ( 591458 )

        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.

  • 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.

  • In www I have classes of websites. Each class has it's own login and it's own password. Things like /., Soylent News and Fark? Same login, same password. Things like my bank or investment companies? All have different logins and different passwords. Things in between are in between.

    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
  • If your devices are Apple products you already have this, no ISP support required.

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