Let’s face it – if you’re not on a cellphone I don’t want to talk to you. It’s 2009 for crying out loud. But from Y2K on, it seems like every phone is no roaming, no long distance. So area codes are suddenly less important from a practical standpoint – you can have your number completely dissociated from geography with no significant inconvenience incurred. Which makes things more difficult when it’s time to pick out a new number,
The thing with Google Voice is that you can set your number anywhere in the US. No geographical obligations. Your phone number can now be purely a matter of identity, vanity, whatever. Which puts me in a bit of a spot – after all, the aim of GV is to be your one number for everything, rings as many physical phones as you like, follows you anywhere and everywhere. So that number becomes a significant personal identifier.
Which means you have to think long and hard. Your home area code – hell, your old hometown? The area code where you lived for years back East? Or the more famous major-city code adjacent to it? If in the Valley, do you want a San Francisco 415 or something else around the bay? And do you want a vanity number that reflects your high school, or your old workgroup, or your callsign and nickname from the old days, or makes references to the radio culture of the greater Washington DC area, or…
You can see where one can get hung up on this and spin wheels quite a bit. Which I am.