[Nexus 4 General] Karl_in_Chicago:
OK, I've finished reading through this entire long thread and have learned an awful lot - thank you all. I'll contribute what little I can as my way of paying back.

Knowing I was going to order 2 Nexus 4's once the Play store reopened for them I ordered 2 T-Mo micro-sim cards a couple weeks ago for $0.99/ea with free shipping. They showed up in a few days. On 11/27 I ordered 2 Nexus 4's with standard shipping - they showed up on Monday 12/3.

I inserted the T-Mo microsims into each phone and let them power to a full charge (one was pretty much already there, the other was close) before powering them on. Out of the box, at home, I did the bare minimum of answering prompts after bootup to get me to where I could add in my home WiFi info and then downloaded the Android Jellybean 4.2.1 updates on each phone. I then unlocked the bootloaders and then rooted each phone, leaving my wife's with the stock recovery and installing TWRP recovery on mine (no need to document unlock/root process, there are already great guides for that).

At this point I went online to the T-mo activation site and activated each phone for the $30/mo 100 minute/unlimited text+data plan. In both cases I indicated I wanted to port the existing phone numbers (one from Sprint, mine, and my wife's from AT&T). Now, in retrospect, I'm kicking myself for porting my wife's; if I had a do-over I would have first ported her number to Google Voice and instead told T-Mo to just assign a new # for her phone. Spilled milk and all, oh well. I was forced to surrender my old # a long time ago and turned that unpleasant event into an opportunity and got a Google voice # then which is the only one I give out now and have it ring my cell, office, home, etc. I should have done the same for my wife.

Each of the activations went relatively smoothly until the very end. Since the porting process is underway and the # not yet ported the web page tells you that you can't use a reload card (no worries, I didn't have any) but you can use a CC or electronic checking withdrawal. THIS IS NOT TRUE! Each time I attempted to do this I received cryptic error messages about server errors or that T-Mo's servers can't process transactions at the moment - everything giving an indication about some type of back-end problem and not the real truth, which is that until the porting process is complete you don't really have an account and therefore can't fund it. Please be aware of this.

Not certain of what was going on I phoned the support number which is inconveniently staffed by a robot that doesn't provide a person in my situation with an adequate choice - do I want to open a new account, am I an existing customer, do I have a billing issue? Well, yes and no, kind of to each. Eventually I talked to someone and explained my situation. After about the third time of explaining he finally got it and told me what I posted above - there is no account yet as the number hasn't been ported. I pointed out that contradicts what the web page was telling me I could do and he said the web page is wrong and apologized. OK, thanks, hung up and waited for texts that porting had been completed which came about 1/2 hour later for each phone.

I went back to the T-Mo site and easily completed the funding and both phones have been working fine, as has T-Mo service, so far.

I've followed the discussions regarding VoIP here and in other places with interest. Neither my wife nor I are big talkers. She's been with AT&T for quite some time (she has an ancient iPhone 3G purchased new so do the math on however long that is) and her rollover every month is right at the 5K minute cap. I only occasionally speak for any extended (more than a few minutes) period of time and that is typically when I'm away from the office and am required to dial into a con-call. It's rare that I have any extended incoming calls.

With all that as preface I believe I will start out by initially installing Vonage on my phone to use for those extended outgoing calls under the right conditions but otherwise mostly stick with the T-Mo voice service. Prior to this switchover my Sprint (EVO 3G) bill was $80-something a month and my wife's was about $90. With tax I'm now looking at a base of a little less than $70/mo for BOTH. If occasionally one of us goes over the allotted minutes (again, reviewing our past bills it would be very occasionally) then I'm fine with paying for the extra minutes - I'd have a very long way to go before I even spent what I was spending on just one of the phones before. This solution, for me, represents a great savings with minimal hassle. I'll continue to follow this thread and others for the valuable insight all of you provide on the best possible solutions to better leverage the data options for our voice service.