Google Voice, formerly GrandCentral and not to be confused with Google Talk, seems to be sending out invititations to people who signed up for the beta program in the last few months. I received mine a few days ago and have been testing the platform ever since.
Setting up Google Voice is very simple: you select an area code and find an available phone number (pattern searching with words or sequences is allowed). The new phone number becomes a forwarding point for all your other phone numbers, enabling incoming calls to Google Voice to hunt on every other number you provide.
But rather than simply provide virtual forwarding, which is part of many voice-over-IP systems, there are a range of other features that essentially start to fuse the world of email and voicemail. Among the most impressive is the ability to transcribe voicemails and provide an email or SMS containing the contents of the caller’s message as text, while also being smart enough to extract contact information to make return calls easy. Everything I’ve seen from Google in the last year – from translation, Wave to Voice – signals to me that voice recognition, spelling and grammer correction and translation capabilities are about to mature very rapidly. Google Voice also learns from the errors it makes, which seem to be few and far between, and handles background noise and accents more seamlessly than any other phone system I’ve seen to date.
Apart from this innovation, the management of voicemail works very similarly to Gmail and is accessible from smart phones such as the new HTC Magic. For users who receive voicemail regularly, this significantly eases the problem of having to listen to every message and cuts voicemail management time down to seconds.
Other features include:
- Free calls and SMS messages to every phone number in the continental US (currently $2.95 a month on Skype).
- Low international rates that are comparable to Skype.
- Effective call screening, allowing you to maintain a blocked list of number with automated identification requests.
- Live listening to callers leaving voicemails.
- Answering incoming calls on any registered phone.
- Greetings can be personalized by caller.
- Recording and storing calls (this is a common theme since it maintains SMS records too).
- Webpage integration (click to call).
- The ability to change your Google phone number for $10.
There are more features in the pipeline. I presume that the same way Gmail adopted corporate requirements such as email retention, Google will focus on similar needs that make Voice a compelling replacement for existing traditional systems. Skype has not been particularly successful in making inroads on the corporate market, so it will be interesting to see Google’s success as this product develops. So essentially, beta testers right now are receiving a free Google phone number for all their devices, free domestic calls, and advanced voicemail management. And so far, my experience has been very positive.
Some more things I've discovered:
1. If you are a T-Mobile customer, add your Google Voice number to myFaves (and ensure every outgoing call is using GV) - and every single call you make, regardless of what you dial, will be treated as a myFaves call - giving you unlimited free calls in your call plan.
2. Use FreeConferenceCall.com and add that number to myFaves - this gives you unlimited free conference calling from your cell.
Fundamentally, if you can get all your friends to use your GV number instead of the original cell number, and you get myFaves set up properly (or the equivalent on other providers), you can opt for the lowest minute plan available and get unlimited calls. Hurray!