Making Free Phone Calls With Google's GrandCentral

andrewmin writes with an enthusiastic pitch for Google's closed-beta call-aggregation service called GrandCentral, for which we non-beta-testers can at least reserve a number. Specifically, he's using GrandCentral in combination with Gizmo5 to make free VoiP calls. Excerpted: "Most of the time, I'm at my computer. Or near it. And if I had an internet device like a Nokia N810 or an iPod Touch, I'd have it with me 24/7. And since most of the time I'm at a place where there's a WiFi network, it makes sense for me to use VoIP rather than a regular phone line. ... I'm talking about making and receiving calls that are completely free (that is, $0.00/minute) forever (that is, no 30-day demo) for as much as you want (that is, no 30-day trial or five hour/week limit)."

Comments

VoIP+WiFi=mobile phone?

[Hunter-Killer]

And since most of the time I'm at a place where there's a WiFi network, it makes sense for me to use VoIP rather than a regular phone line. As someone who hates cell phones, I used a softphone (reaching back to an Asterisk server) on my laptop for a few months. Anytime I used WiFi outside my house (campus network or coffee-shop style coverage) I had nothing but problems: garbled communication, one side of the conversation not hearing anything, etc. Almost completely unusable--you know service is bad when it makes cell phone quality look fantastic in comparison.

Anyway, Grand Central may be a replacement for a land-line phone, but I think Andrew is being a bit optimistic about the adequacy of using it as a "mobile" phone.