I recently ported my 30+ year landline # from BasicTalk (Vonage) to Google Voice because I wanted the ability to do something about the ever-increasing spam calls. My thinking was by parking the # at Google Voice I can easily move to a new service provider if I am not satisfied with the service provider in use for whatever reason. Forwarding calls to a different # is all it takes besides setting up the service. As of this writing, I am forwarding calls to a Callcentric free DID, which I have had for a while and have opted in to be a $1 Unlimited receiving call DID, to test its spam call filter (the call treatment feature). One thing I notice after one week's use of Google Voice is the number of spam calls is significantly reduced. I had a total of 8 spam calls for the week, which is less than one-third of what I used to get. Also I used to have at least one spam call, daily, bearing the same area code as my phone # and one spam call, almost daily, bearing the same area code and the prefix. But for the last week, I only got one with the same area code and none from # with the same beginning 6-digit phone # yet. Now what intrigues me is what makes the difference. Did the porting process disrupts the robot callers, temporarily? Does it relate to the fact that I am not in Vonage's phone database anymore? Or maybe Google Voice has some technogy in place to weed out illegimate calls before even to consider them as spam calls? Speculation time. :) By the way, Google Voice's spam filter caught 6 of 8 spam calls. I believe Callcentirc would have caught them if they were forwarded. Callcentric caught one of the two forwarded to and only one spam call rang my phone at the end. For the whole week! Isn't that quiet?
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