Google Voice Grabs 1 Million Phone Numbers 198
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.'"
Re:Will it work when my nets die? Or with 911? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:3, Informative)
I imagine you could, but political campaigns and charities can ignore the DNC list anyway. More importantly, Google Voice gives you a lot more control over screening your calls before you answer them.
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:But I don't want you to call my mobile! (Score:2, Informative)
Actually, you can flag numbers to direct straight to voice mail. Which then gets transcibed into and email. The service gives you some pretty good controls over handling calls and routing, based on factors like time, caller and your availability.
In your case, you can give out the number freely and only forward people in your "Friends" group to you cell phone.
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Where are the Telco's Lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
Whisper campaign? Well, let's see. If the end-game for Vonage is to replace the existing hardwired telephone service there is one little problem - they need the wires to be maintained for their customer's DSL links. Nobody really believes that the wireline maintenance is going to be covered by the revenue generated by selling naked DSL service.
The end result of this is Vonage can be a bit player off to the side but should they "succeed" they really fail. Not a good overall strategy. Yes, I guess you could say they don't own the value-drivers. More importantly, they desperately need their competition in order to survive. And their competition has to be both doing well enough to support their business and make it possible for them to compete.
Worse yet for Vonage and their ilk is that the government has mandated the wireline telephone companies have to provide for data services and bulk-purchased voice services to be priced below real costs. As long as these services are provided to a few players and the main part of the telco revenue is still providing telephone service everything will be fine. But, again, should Vonage or any of their sort really "succeed", they fail.
Would the right answer be to forcibly separate the wireline facilities from the telco voice providers? Sure, except under current rules no wireline facility could operate because the services that are sold today to outside companies are done so at a loss. There are a lot of wires out there and the maintenance of this is quite costly. Today that bill is paid for by voice services, mostly for business customers that have entirely different billing arrangements than residential customers do.
So pulling the facilities management away from the telcos would simply require the data and bulk services to be sold at real prices. So the $14.99 DSL service would be more like $99. At today's pricing it makes sense for an individual to drop their $25 telephone and $15 DSL to something like $15 DSL and Magic Jack at $20 a year. If the DSL service was priced including wireline maintenance costs, it wouildn't be practical at all. The real problem there would be lost of people can't afford $1200 a year for Internet and would drop it. Loss of market share like this would cripple plenty of things and would change the landscape of Internet service providers in the US.
What is the real answer? I suspect it is to abandon wireline maintenance completely and replace it with new fiber optic links from a completely new company. In about 50 years. In the meantime, we will have the existing wires in the ground and on the poles until they need repair. And with nobody repairing it, people will just do without wired connections.
Re:I'm waiting.... (Score:5, Informative)
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).
Re:I'm waiting.... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:privacy? (Score:1, Informative)
For your first question, please read the Google Voice FAQ, and other questions, they answer exactly how everything works.
Yes, Google could technically monitor your activity, for all the calls you make through Google Voice, but really are you worth it?
No, they can't sell the data, once again answered in the FAQ.
International? So far Google has only offered this service in the US, you can make outbound international phone calls for a small price.
As for embracing things too quickly, go put on your tin foil hat, and just don't sign up for the service. You are not REQUIRED to sign up for this service. You can keep your own privacy if you don't trust Google to abide by its own terms and conditions.
Re:potentially troubling feature (Score:3, Informative)
When someone calls and they record the phone call Google Voice will automatically say the phone call is being recorded, see the faq: http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115037 [google.com]
You CAN intiate a call from your phone directly (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:privacy? (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, he may have no choice. If someone else signs up for it, and then calls him...they have forced the use of GV on him.
This same concern came up during the rollout of gmail.
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:3, Informative)
Naw. We're all geeks here (right?) - setting up the software is the fun part. We do this shit because it's interesting to us -- and that's also the reason that we're so pale.
The real difficulty in operating one's own personal PBX is maintaining the sodden thing and the hardware that runs it, and then trying to justify paying for it.
In this context, Google Voice works just fine for a single independent user, has zero maintenance, and is free. I don't even need an Internet connection for to work -- the whole thing can be set up from a public terminal at the library or the coffee house.
On the other hand, Asterisk can work with lots of users, has non-zero maintenance, and is not free. (Oh, sure - the software's free. But the hardware isn't free. And the connectivity isn't free. And...)
Re:Will it work when my nets die? Or with 911? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure any calls between Google VOIP customers will be VOIP on the backend. I'm sure they'll integrate it into Google Talk as well, and then your end could be totally VOIP, and if the other party uses Google Talk it would be VOIP end-to-end. Further, if they're smart, they'll let you use your SIP-based "hard" phones with the service as well.
Second, ENUM is already standard that allows you to use DNS to direct your calls wherever you want (voice or fax - see fax could just go direct from mail server to mail server over SMTP, and if not available use the traditional number). However, guess who has to implement ENUM? The local telco providers who have been assigned numbers have to implement it - and guess what, none of the traditional Bell companies have done that or will do that anytime soon because it allows you to bypass their services and control how your number is called. I could see Google changing all this (at least between VOIP-enabled providers). TPC [tpc.int] has tried to make this happen, but really it needs to be done at your service-provider level so you don't have to manage DNS: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-2/enum.html [cisco.com].
Regarding revenue, I'm sure it'll be the same as Google Apps. Free for certain features, pay for other. Perhaps Google will make it free for all at first, get folks hooked, and then pay.
Competing in the corporate world will be hard, however. All of these features I've heard of, you can do with a Cisco CallManager/Unity platform. One-reach number forwarding, listening to calls as the caller leaves the message (plus telling the system to take the call, which prompts the person calling with, "Your party can take your call now, please stand by," and then two-way voice goes through), per-number-filtering (profiles, etc.), initiating calls from your cell's smart-app (this is really SIP, and what occurs is Google would place a call out to your cell and the party you wish to call at the same time, presenting you with the caller's number on your callerid, and presenting them with your Google number on their callerid, thus "masking" the phone you calling from), text to speed (read your email to you), speech to text (convert speech to text), fax to email, email to fax, SIP VOIP to your telco so no need for a PRI or analog trunks. All that, and you don't have to worry about Google turning "evil."
However, I, as a small business owner, I cannot afford the hardware and licensing to do this. I'd love to pay Google for such a feature without a huge capital investment. I'm sure others would too.
Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features). In the Cisco world, you just hang up the cell call and it's still there for 2 seconds and you can pick it up on your desk. Or, if you were on your desk and needed to step away, you just press "Mobile" and the system dials your cell (but the desk call isn't affected at all) and as soon as you hang up your desk phone the two-way audio cuts through on your cell. While on a traditional phone system you could just transfer your call to your cell, the advantage is you can drop back to your desk phone (or any other office phone that you log into) without having to transfer it from your cell (thus tying up two voice paths and running up your cell minutes).
Anyway, it is cool tech, and I'm glad to see Google bringing it to the masses.
Re:How big is the market? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Will it work when my nets die? Or with 911? (Score:3, Informative)
Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features).
You can actually do this. Say you have your cell, home and office phones listed in your account. If you're on a GVoice call on your cell, when you get to one of the other phones, you can hit * (I think) and it causes the other phones to ring. Pick it up and you can hang up the cell phone and keep going where you left off.