Verizon+VerizonFamily->AT&TFamily
September 27, 2010 2:41 PM   Subscribe

Walk me through this complicated transfer of two separate Verizon phone numbers onto an AT&T family plan.

Bahngerama and I are moving to a new house in the woods of Vermont where our Verizon mobile phones get spotty service. We are thinking of getting iPhones and combining our numbers into a family plan. I currently have my own month-to-month contract and Bahngerama has a month-to-month plan as the second phone on her parents' family plan. How do we go about making the change, keeping our numbers? Conversely, if Verizon is going to start selling iPhones in a few hours, we might wait it out and stay with Verizon but still get a family plan together.
posted by billtron to Technology (8 answers total)
 
have you checked to make sure that AT&T service is available in your Vermont woods? When I lived in Vermont, AT&T would not let you start an account in Vermont, or keep your account if you made the majority of your calls in Vermont, because the roaming charges were so high for them (they don't own any towers in Vermont). Things might have changed (that was 3 or so years ago), but I'd double check before trying to convert.
posted by iamscott at 2:46 PM on September 27, 2010


Response by poster: @iamscott, thanks for the warning, but that problem disappeared in 2008 when AT&T bought Unicel.
posted by billtron at 2:49 PM on September 27, 2010


Best answer: We went the other way - porting our AT&T phone numbers to a Verizon family plan - and it was a relatively pain free process.

If you buy your phones from a store, they will be able to set up the whole thing. Bring in each of your account numbers.

If you want to do this online, you need to start with the online "number portability" lookup here, but in our case with T-Mobile it was wrong - we easily ported a non-local number in the store.
posted by muddgirl at 3:00 PM on September 27, 2010


I wouldn't switch until you get there and know what works on your commute too. (I found that Sprint worked best for me in VT 6 years ago.)
posted by k8t at 3:22 PM on September 27, 2010


Verizon just announced (saw it in yesterdays paper) that they will not be selling iPhones anytime soon. Don't remember what the snafu is - I work for AT&T so was just happy they are not going to sell them!
posted by shaarog at 5:33 PM on September 27, 2010


Want me to come over with my 3G iPhone and see if you have a strong signal, billtron?
posted by terrapin at 5:53 AM on September 30, 2010


Response by poster: @terrapin, if you happen to be driving along Beaver Meadow on your way to campus, please do stop by and check out construction and see if you get signal. p.s. sorry we couldn't meet you guys and jessamyn for dinner the other day.
posted by billtron at 5:56 AM on October 1, 2010


Response by poster: Three bars and intermittent 3G. More than we could have asked for. Thanks everyone.
posted by billtron at 6:55 AM on October 12, 2010


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