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.'"

Comments

Re:Oh, that's just great...

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Now telemarketers, religious freaks, and campaign-donation guys will be able to find me no matter where I am.

I am a Google voice user.
Zero automated telemarketing calls get through to me. The system defaults to requiring callers with previously unseen caller-id's to state their name before it will even ring my real phone(s). No automated system knows how to do that so far.

Even if a real person calls and does get past the name prompt, I can "answer" the phone by sending the call to voice-mail and listening in, the way you can with a real physical answering machine.

I am also able to blacklist specific caller-id numbers to either go directly to voice-mail or to play the "this number has been disconnected" recording and tone pattern.

Worst case, I can also configure all unknown caller-id numbers to go directly to voice-mail too.

Since signing up with GrandCentral a year or two ago (the predecessor company that google purchased) my annoying call rate has gone to zero.

Re:How big is the market?

[jackspenn]

Nearly universally, everyone who I know in their mid 20s - early 30s don't have a landline

The same used be be true for me, but now my parents, aunts and uncles, former teachers, etc. have all switched. I would say that nearly every person I know 15-62 have switched solely to cell phones in place of home phones. The two people I know with a home phone, my grandfather (85) and grandmother (82) switched to Vonage over two years ago to the complete surprise of the entire family. Reason they gave "It's a fixed monthly cost that works for what they need."
I really think the traditional home phone line could be dead in a decade or so.

Re:I'm waiting....

[AntiRush]

I have a google voice account (transferred over from grandcentral) and in general 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.

I ended up giving my real number to anyone that mattered. I still use my Google Voice number for anything online or calls/text messages that I potentially want to screen. It's a great service but it didn't work for me as an every day number.