Simplify your phone service with Google Voice
The big news as of late from Google is all about their new cellphone, The Nexus One.
Billed by some to be the iPhone killer, billed as a letdown by others, it does bring some big changes to the way we think about cellphones.
But beyond the Nexus One, Google has also been somewhat quietly working on another service that may help turn the Nexus One and future cellphones into something truly unique — and it’s already help simplify my telephone use drastically.
The service, Google Voice, officially launched in March of 2009 and became available to consumers in June. The service was the result of Google’s purchase of phone service GrandCentral in 2007 for $95 million and months of work in secrecy about the project.
I’ve been using the service as soon as my invite came — shortly after the launch — and love it.
Free call routing/forwarding
To begin with, my cellphone has an old area-code attached to the number (which is long distance from our area) and I just haven’t been able to justify spending the money or taking the necessary effort to update my phone number to a new local number.
Google Voice solves that problem for me.
When I signed up, I picked a local phone number and simply give local folks my new Google phone number — now all my calls are routed to the phone of my choosing.
I can even pick how different calls are routed — depending on the caller.
Some calls are routed to my cellphone. Some are routed to my cellphone and office phone. Some are routed to Skype and then all calls from our realtor and realtor service — are all routed to each of my phones as well as Laurie’s phone.
It couldn’t be simpler.
My father in law is notorious for using a number of pre-paid cellphone services — so his phone numbers may change from day to day.
But Google Voice has eliminated the confusion by providing one simply number that connects to any other number he chooses to use that day.
Transcribing voice mails
The service also offers a great transcription service that sends a transcription of each voice mail as a text and e-mail.
There are still a few buggy words here or there — for instance, our local fire marshal called and with his deep Texas accent, each time he said “fire,” it was transcribed as “far.” But overall the transcriptions give you an accurate picture of what the voice mail said.
Free domestic long distance and SMS
Additionally, with Google Voice I can call anywhere in the US and Canada for free from any local phone number.
I can also send SMS text messages to anyone in the US and Canada for free (and have even been able to connect via SMS to the UK for free — though I’m not sure that’s an advertised feature).
While it’s true, because we no longer have a home phone line, I do use my cellphone for 99% of my calling (which includes free long distance in the US). However, this is a great tool to have at work or any other time I don’t want to use up my cellphone minutes or I don’t want to use the office’s long distance code.
So how does all this change the way we see cell phones?
Already with Google’s Nexus One, you can use Google Voice to make all your phone calls over Wi-Fi — bypassing your cell carrier almost completely.
Google Voice essentially replaces your cellphone carrier by using VOIP over Wi-Fi or your cellular data package (although it appears you need to install a third party app to use VOIP over your data plan).
With this option, you could avoid using your cellphone minutes completely.
Essentially, all you’d need to make a call from your cellphone would be a data plan or a Wi-Fi connection.
No provider is currently offering a data only plan for cellphones but it could easily be coming in the near future… we’ll keep our fingers crossed!
Until then, you can find out more about Google Voice at: Google.com/voice — and then tell us…
How much could you save by switching to Google Voice for your long distance service? Have you made the switch already? Will you make the switch now? Would you switch to a data plan only on your cellphone if it were made available?
UPDATE: A great simple video explaining some of the benefits of Google Voice:
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