I dont think you can port a existing land line to google voice like you can with a mobile #. I could be wrong.

Google Voice FAQ- http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answ...

"I dont think you can port a existing land line to google voice like you can with a mobile #."

Correct.

However you can (I did) do this:

1) Move the landline to your cell phone provider (assumes you have a family plan, if you don't convert to one for the time necessary to do the other steps).

2) Once the number is at the cell phone provider you can transfer it to google voice (and get rid of the family plan if you didn't have one). Took a few weeks.

3) You can buy an http://obihai.com/ device if you want to be able to hook up a traditional POTS phone to get the calls. Or you can just make and receive calls at the google voice website.

Note: I did this with the cell phone provider being AT&T. I would assume it will work with other cell providers but it does with AT&T.

> I could be wrong.

You're wrong. Walk into any wireless carrier store, grab the cheapest pre-paid phone, transfer your landline # to the prepaid phone. Log on to Google Voice and now transfer your mobile number.

I did this for my parents who were still using Vonage. Works flawlessly.

Fine, then port it to Magic Jack for $20 a year, and forward the calls to your cell phone

You would do just that. I doubt, however, this website is targeted at the Hacker News crowd.

If my inlaws wanted to get rid of their landline and get individual cell phones and needed their old number to transfer out, they wouldn't port their number to Google Voice and then forward from Google Voice to their cell phone.

I'm also not sure if paying $10 / month is attractive to consumers, but that's just speculation!

You're exactly right, we think the target market is older and less comfortable with technology than the Hacker News crowd. The most common reaction we get when we pitch the service to someone is "I wouldn't need that, but it could be great for my parents/grandparents/inlaws/etc". Ideas about how to best appeal and market to this demographic are welcome.

I told my dad to get that magic jack plus.

I doubt a large portion of Kill The Landline's potential market (like, say, my parents with cell phones, an unused landline, and zero desire to mess with GV) would want to worry about doing this.

Yep, this is a totally pointless product. It might've made sense a few years ago, but ever since Google Voice has been out, this has been possible for free.

I disagree. Nobody outside the tech community knows that Google Voice exists, let alone how to use it. This has solid branding (esp. the name) and good messaging.

The price might be a little high for what it's doing, but if the idea is to eventually phase out your landline number, this could be a good way of doing it.

I had to login just reply to this... Google Voice is used by all kinds of people. I can think of at least ten people over the age of 50 in my family alone who use it. Hell, my 81 year old grandfather has a GV account that forwards his old landline to his cell.

Almost every one of my non-tech friends uses it as well.

Did your grandfather set it up himself?

We think there's value in creating a simpler, more focused user experience than Google Voice. I hope that focus comes across in the branding we've developed so far. As others have commented, porting your number to Google Voice and setting up forwarding can be a daunting process; we're trying hard to design a system that insulates customers from that sort of complexity.

Plus I would, generally, rather pay somebody to care about something like this; $10/mo gives me an expectation of at least the same class of customer service that a normal telco would - i.e. not particularly effective, but a great improvement on the yawning void of google's support for free products.