How to determine if a mobile number is on the Verizon network

Need to find out if a mobile number is considered in-network for Verizon? There’s a page on Verizon’s site that let’s you find out easily and quickly: Determine if a mobile number is in the Verizon Wireless Mobile to Mobile Calling Family.

My wife and I are starting to send more text messages as more and more friends and family prefer them to phone calls (why I don’t know–in most cases I’d gladly take a 3 minute phone call over 45 minutes of text messages back and forth). At any rate, my wife was starting to exceed her 250 message/month plan regularly, so I called to see what other options we could choose. Verizon has a new plan that’s only $10/month that includes unlimited in-network text messages and 500 out-of-network messages. That seems like a good option for us since most of the people we know are in-network (at least they are since Verizon bought Alltel).

Now the question is, how can we tell who is in-network and who is out-of-network if we don’t know? I posed that question to Jared, the Verizon customer service representative who helped me switch to the new text messaging plan. Jared led me on what seemed like a round-about way of finding the online tool for answering this question, but we got there. I hope this helps someone else save some time:

1. Start at the main Verizon Wireless homepage.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page where there are BLUE text links.
3. Look for the one named “Best Network” and click on it. (it’s current on the top line of links, close to the center of the page)
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page where there are BLACK text links.
5. Look for the one named “Best Network” and click on it. (it’s current on the top line of links, on the right side of the page)
6. The page that loads features (currently) a picture of a young man holding a phone just to the left of a coverage map of the US. Just above his head is a “Mobile to Mobile Calling” link. Click on it.
7. This page features a picture of a family, all using their mobile phones (of course). In the left-hand column below the picture is the heading “Unlimited Mobile to Mobile Calling.” Click the “Find Out Now”  button at the bottom of that column.
8. A dialog box pops up and allows you to enter up to three mobile numbers. Clicking the Submit button at the bottom of the window will return a page indicating the in- or out-of-network status for each number you entered.

Here’s the direct link again, for convenience: Determine if a mobile number is in the Verizon Wireless Mobile to Mobile Calling Family.

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