Why a new phone number?#

I last changed my mobile phone number in Spring of 2008 when I moved to San Francisco, CA, so I’ve had my 415-based number for close to 20 years now. In March of 2019, I moved to Portland, Oregon. At the time, I gave a brief thought to getting a number with a Portland area code, but decided against it due to the complexity of having to change my number with everyone I keep in contact with. Yeah, I could have my old number forwarded, but it would still take a lot of planning.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago. I had just gotten a new job and found that the cellular provider I used at the time, which used T-Mobile’s network, did not get good coverage at the new office. Internet music was spotty and phone calls were problematic. Furthermore, my place of employment did not have a general-purpose wi-fi network available to employees.

After a month or so, I broke down and switched carriers to one that provided signal boosters around the office complex. I’d gotten a nice new phone, the Samsung S23 Ultra, and I had 4G coverage at the office, more than enough for phone calls and internet music streaming. But, I ran into another problem.

Coverage was near non-existant at home. Sure, I got 5G coverage, but that means diddly when you have barely one bar of service. Using the phone as a mobile hot spot was out of the question, and there had been times when our internet provider went down so no wi-fi availability. And I was paying $50 more per month for less service? Not worth it.

So why not switch? Here’s the rub. When I signed up, I went for a plan that provided me a new phone for “free”. This “free” phone would be paid for out of a fund over the course of three years. If I canceled the plan, I’d have to pay for the amount owed on the phone. Put simply, they were holding my “free” phone hostage over the course of three years to lock me in.

It should come to no surprise that I was very unhappy about this. I decided to simply grin-n-bear it for the next three years until the phone was paid off.

Now, fast forward to today. I’ve been very happy in Portland and don’t really see myself moving from the area for some time. I consider myself an Oregonian now. I also found myself wishing for a final clean break from San Francisco.

So, since I still have a year to go before I can dump my current carrier, why not get a separate phone with a new Portland-based phone number with another carrier? There are several pros to this:

  • I’d have good coverage at both home and work. I could use one phone at work and another at home.
  • I could try out a new carrier and see if it worked for me. There are virtual carriers that use multiple networks so I could switch between them.
  • I would have a year to update the various companies I do business with to the new number.
  • I’d get a new shiny toy phone to use.
  • I’d have my psychological final break from the San Francisco bay area.
  • Since I’d have to update contact information anyway, and I’d like to move away from my current GMail account, I could take this opportunity to get everything done at once.

There are some cons to this:

  • Pay for a new phone, which could run in excess of $1000.
  • Lugging around two phones
  • There are two area codes available for Portland: The classic 503 area code and a newer area code, 971 created in Summer of 1999. While I’d like a 503-area code, I will probably be assigned one in 971-land.

UPDATE

Writing this blog post, I realized I had another, much cheaper, option. There’s a virtual carrier called USMobile that allows you to use multiple networks on the same device. You just need a phone that supports either two physical SIMs and/or an eSIM. My Samsung S23 Ultra supports this. You then sign up for a plan on US Mobile and select their Multi-Network Add-on to get a 2nd carrier.

This has the following benefits:

  • I don’t have to pay for a new phone.
  • I can immediately switch to US Mobile, thus saving the expense of having to pay for two carriers for the next year.
  • I’m spending way less per month.

This is the option I have decided to go with.

Next up, why do I want to get rid of my GMail account?