AT&T Reduces Your SMS Options → Google Voice +1 by me

I have the old $5 for 200 messages on 2 of my phones. I'm going to cancel it, place a texting block and oh use google voice or yahoo messenger. F&$? AT&T. They are actin just like the old AT&T that was broken up in the 80s. Hope ut happens again.

I have that plan too, and upon reading the comments on the article, apparently that's been gone for several months now.

I'm holding onto it as long as I can, as most of my friends don't know my Google Voice number. I usually only use 100-150 texts a month max, but that's enough that $5 a month is still a good deal.

I use Google Voice as well. For messaging people it works very well, especially if you have messages pushed to your phone so they show up just like normal text messages.

The problem with it though is you can't text to any of the short code numbers that companies use. They simple don't work with Google Voice (or any of the other free SMS services).

The other problem, at least on the iPhone, is that when you text someone it defaults to SMS, not Google Voice. With iOS 5, it will default to iMessage, but only if the person you are texting has an iPhone. If not it uses SMS. So to text using Google Voice you have to remember to actually open the app. I believe Android can use Google Voice by default (obviously).

When jailbroken on iOS4, you can install "GV Extensions" and "SMS GV Extensions" which reroute Google Voice messages and calls through the iPhone's native phone and messages apps (using the native Google Voice app's push notifications for alerts). It's a hack, yes, but it replicates the Android functionality. As soon as I get around to upgrading my iOS, I'm installing those first thing.