Pros and Cons of Google voice as Primary Provider?

[CoalMinerRetired]

^ what he said.

CallMeAl, look at the link above, and in "a)" note where it says "Example carriers are AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Alltel."  GV will only port from these carriers.

Then go here, in particular this:
Port Your Number to Google Voice™

[Felix]

Guys / gals - let's all be friends here...

The exact error message I get is:
Ooops! This number appears to be from an area we don't currently support.

Which means that Google won't be able to port, even after the number is transferred to cellular provider.

I'm still not clear if you are trying to port a landline or a cell phone number?

The interesting thing is I was actually trying to port in an Ooma number.
--Al

Which I would say is the answer.

True, azrobert wrote a good tutorial on porting (I think it was him - all good tutorials that I saw here recently were written by him ). The main thing is to distinguish whether the number can be ported to Google before you start porting to the pre-paid cell phone... you don't want to get trapped in the middle!