There is a work-around for this, but it's somewhat painful and not guaranteed to work. You can port a land-line number to Vonage (at least in many cases, not all localities support LNP at this time, but you can check your number for portability at Vonage.com). You should then be able to port your Vonage number into Google Voice. I have not tried this second step, but it should work.
EDIT: Apparently, it doesn't work for VOIP numbers at this time. Nonetheless, Vonage does offer many of the same features as GV, like multi-forwarding and VM transcription, for a reasonable, flat monthly fee.
I ported my wife's 212 phone number (the original area code for Manhattan, before overlays, arguably the most sought-after area code in the country) to Vonage before we left NYC. People are always asking me how I did it. To be fair, it took almost two months to complete the port, and there was a lot of yelling on the phone at Vonage and AT&T (previous landline service provider) in the interim. For a while there, I thought that the number was lost for good.
I will warn you, if you move across time zones, porting your home number may come back to bite you -- we regularly get calls from businesses at 9:05 AM EST, which is 6:05 AM PST ...
EDIT: Apparently, it doesn't work for VOIP numbers at this time. Nonetheless, Vonage does offer many of the same features as GV, like multi-forwarding and VM transcription, for a reasonable, flat monthly fee.
I ported my wife's 212 phone number (the original area code for Manhattan, before overlays, arguably the most sought-after area code in the country) to Vonage before we left NYC. People are always asking me how I did it. To be fair, it took almost two months to complete the port, and there was a lot of yelling on the phone at Vonage and AT&T (previous landline service provider) in the interim. For a while there, I thought that the number was lost for good.
I will warn you, if you move across time zones, porting your home number may come back to bite you -- we regularly get calls from businesses at 9:05 AM EST, which is 6:05 AM PST ...