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Google Voice Grabs 1 Million Phone Numbers
alphadogg writes "Google has reserved 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may finally be ready to roll out its long-anticipated Google Voice service. The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones. Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned. Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google is close to adding a significant number of users. A public launch has been anticipated since Google said in March the service would be 'open to new users soon.' One early user said: 'I've only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it's completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate... When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.'"
This isn't a net phone, per se; it's a phone abstraction. A number that lives out there in the phone cloud, which you point to whatever number(s) you wish to receive calls at. You can still dial directly out from your cell phone, home phone, office phone, whatever. 911 is based on the number you're calling from. However, if you want your GVoice number to show up on caller ID, you would instead initiate the call from the GVoice web site or the android/iphone app. In other words, as long as you've got a working phone, you've got 911. The use of GVoice doesn't change that at all.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I've already registered mine on the DNC list, but additionally, you can also do fun things like push all unknown callers directly to voice mail. Then you can quickly review and delete your VM's on their web site.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Not exactly innovative. Verizon gave me that at my apartment in 2002.
What exactly is your point? The service as a whole is very useful, and somewhat innovative. There are precedents for many--if not all--of the features, but many of them would have required a staffed calling center not that long ago.
So here's an example of what I like. I can always route my parents to my home number, and my friends to my office during the day, my cell phone at night. I can route colleagues to my office by day, direct to voice mail at night. If I'm going on vacation and staying at a cabin where cell signal is bad, and I want to be reached by one particular friend, I can route their calls to the cabin's land-line before I leave.
And then beyond all that, when people leave a voice mail, GVoice automatically transcribes it. It's not perfect, but it's often faster to get the idea of what they called about without having to listen to a long, rambling VM.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I didn't find the GV android app to be all that usable. The extra overhead ended up making me miss a lot of calls that I wouldn't otherwise have. Another problem was that dialing out either involved using the GV application which dials your Google Voice number and places the call via their system or making calls from your real number. The former put a 10 - 15 second overhead on making a call and the latter tends to confuse people because they are receiving a call from a different number than the one they (were told to) call.
If you haven't tried the latest version, I recommend you do so; it makes the dialing process much more seamless. If you still have problems with, don't hesitate to shoot me an email: gv {at} evancharlton {dot} com (that goes for anyone else that has questions or suggestions).
Just a heads up: the current Android client (found here: http://www.cyrket.com/package/com.evancharlton.googlevoice) is *not* official in any way, shape or form.
I just want to add that you can initiate a call from your phone directly. You can call your own Google number and then press "2" to dial out to a new number (including international) and end with a "#" to start ringing. I now have a few international numbers on speed dial on my cell phone (I have bought some google credit for this), the entries are in the format:
my_google_number p 2 p destiantion_number #
note that "p" inserts a ~2 second pause on most dialers.
To get this working seamlessly you need to go to your account settings and disable PIN entry for mail box and use caller ID instead to identify your cell phone as authorized to go straight in. If you don't want to do that you need to include the right pauses and pin dialing codes in that example above.