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

Posted by BeauHD on from the all-in-one dept.

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.

10 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Google Voice by sbrown7792 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sooooo, Google Voice? Except GV is carrier independent, and free, so I guess that's what sets it apart.

    1. Re:Google Voice by m.dillon · · Score: 2

      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

    2. Re:Google Voice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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 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.

    3. Re: Google Voice by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

      Finally, someone who Gets It(tm)...

      The thing is, for this to work, we'd HAVE to make phone numbers at least 16-20 digits to keep the universe of numbers sufficiently sparse to frustrate random dialing attempts.

      Personally, I think the NANP area should ultimately go to variable-length numbers... 12 digits for new numbers, 10 digits for legacy and 'gateway' phone numbers [ie, the main number people call to reach a business], and the ability to append up to 10-20 more digits to a 12-digit number [with logic to block calls from anyone who dials too many invalid sub-numbers].

      Ex: Suppose my current cell # is 1-305-555-1234. That's mine in perpetuity. But I might ALSO have 111-7860-5555-2468, which would silently forward to some call-handler (like a recorded announcement I made) specified by me, and could have almost unlimited adhoc numbers like 111-7860-5555-2468-wwww-xxxx-yyyy-zzzz (the 'yyyy-zzzz' part would be passed along to my device, but not used by the phone network itself (so I could use it for any purpose I like, or omit it entirely). To fight call spam, callers would need a telco-signed x509 cert that unambiguously identifies them by organization, subsidiary, department, and caller (so I could block calls with certs associated with ${political-party}, calls from ${cruise-line-determined to sell me another cruise}, etc.

  2. Re:Data Only plan by sims+2 · · Score: 2

    I would like to know why they are still assigning numbers to devices that can't make use of them.

    --
    Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  3. All my devices? by jabberw0k · · Score: 2

    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.

  4. Project Fi by ChrisC1234 · · Score: 2

    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.

    1. Re:Project Fi by gweilo8888 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

  5. Account details exposed by phorm · · Score: 2

    Yeaaaaah, you might want to hold off on signing up for that just yet.

  6. Re: Data Only plan by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

    Because doing otherwise would force them to scrap ss7 with something else, and nobody can agree what that replacement should be, or how to deploy it in a way that allows a gradual phase-in instead of a disruptive & risky instant switch-over.