I won’t claim I invented this hack. It has been discussed a couple of times on bargain forums but I believe it is not getting the attention it deserves.
My cell phone has long become my primary way of communication and while I do believe we are slowly getting to the point when a phone will become just a VoIP platform and wireless providers will just sell data service so we all can enjoy unlimited voice calls and mobile internet (think WiMax), I also think we are far from being there and this hack brings me one step closer to this goal. Let’s see what combining GrandCentral and t-Mobile in order to get unlimited calls from/to your cell phone is really worth.
How does it work?
First ingredient you need is myFaves which is a t-Mobile feature that allows you to add up to 5 numbers to your “myFaves” list and make free unlimited calls to/from these numbers. If you don’t already have it, it costs extra $10 a month to enable it with your regular service. Alltel has a similar thing called “My Circle” and I believe it is free with any plan over $59.99
Second ingredient is GrandCentral, a service owned by Google which gives you a free local phone number to use as a relay to the other numbers you have. It is a very useful service on its own (I blogged about it last year) but for the purpose of implementing this hack you really only need a subset of the functionality it provides.
Steps to implement the hack
Inbound calling
- Sign up for an account at GrandCentral. You will need an invitation for that. I have several that I can give to the first people who reply to this post.
- Add the phone number you get from GrandCentral to your myFaves list (or My Circle if you use Alltel).
- Configure GrandCentral to redirect all calls to your cell phone number.
- Change GrandCentral Caller ID settings to “Display my GrandCentral number”. Now every time you get a call to your GrandCentral number it will be treated by t-Mobile as if you received a call from GrandCentral and counted against the pull of unlimited myFaves minutes.
Outbound calling
There are really two ways you can implement unlimited outbound calling. First is to ask your friends call your GrandCentral number and leave a short message. Once you have them all, you can listen to them by calling your GrandCentral number. One of the options GrandCentral offers as you are listening to a message is to return the call. So when you want to call one of your friends, simply call your GrandCentral number, skip to your friend’s voice mail message and then select “Return the call” option from the phone keypad.
This will work well if you have relatively few friends and becomes really inconvenient if the list of your friends grows.
The alternative way is to use Yak4Ever which is a free service (read about it here) that lets you register up to 10 numbers and call them for free. If this is the way you want to go then you will have to add Yak4Ever number to your myFaves list as well.
I have not had much experience with Yak4Ever but it did seem to have worked the last time I used them and the voice quality was decent.
Update: Just as I wrote this, Yak4ever shut down the service, but you can still use GrandCentral for your free outbound calls as described above.
What are the benefits & drawbacks?
The main benefit is that you can have unlimited calls to and from your cell phone, something that is easily worth over $100 a month. The benefit however comes at a cost. First, you will have to ask everyone to use your new phone number (the one you obtain from GrandCentral). Second, you lose Caller ID functionality. GrandCentral will announce to you who is calling but I find it less convenient than seeing the person’s name and photo (yeah, I have a picture assigned to each of my friends).
For outgoing calls the inconvenience is in the extra steps you need to make to setup the call by either returning the voice message or by dialing Yak4Ever number and selecting the appropriate entry from your list of registered numbers.
Conclusion
So is it worth the hassle or not? For me it is. I still can assign 4 of my remaining myFaves numbers to my close friends and family, but I did reserve one for GrandCentral. I plan to use it with certain people who I don’t call very often but when I do my conversations tend to take a while. Think about your far-away relatives or anyone else who you sync up with on a periodic basis.
Tell me what you think about it. Are you planning to use this hack or is it just a waste of time? One thing I keep wondering about is how long is it before Google plugs this back door. Or will it?
Source: discussions at FatWallet and SlickDeals forums
