Google Voice Opens To All 185
An anonymous reader writes "Google Voice is now open to anyone in the US, removing the need to search for an invite. At the Google Voice site, anyone with a US IP address and a US phone number can sign up for an account. Non-US IPs are blocked, and non-US-based phone numbers are prevented from attaching to Google Voice (with the single odd exception of the 403 area code of southern Alberta)." Good timing on the part of Frontier Communications Corp., which just filed a lawsuit claiming that the Google Voice feature connecting a user's home, work, and cell phone numbers to another number infringes one of their patents.
Re:WTF (Score:2, Interesting)
Allow me to introduce you to the concept of "context". This is a US-based, and US-centric site. Surely you can understand this.
Here's another example from Auntie Beeb [bbc.co.uk]. Am I meant to gather that all women around the world can obtain contraceptives from UK National Health Service? Of course not. Context. Learn about it. Live it. Love it.
-Peter
It's good but it could be great (Score:4, Interesting)
Grandcentral had consensus-based call filtering; numbers flagged by enough people as undesirable got added to a blacklist anyone could subscribe to and Google took it out, which is a shame. Google voice still has trouble turning off some call presentation features - for instance pressing "4" to toggle call recording. Every time you receive a call from an automated system that requires a 4 as input GV just eats the digit. They also removed SIP call handling for anyone but Gizmo 5, another damn shame. Having said that, it is free except for international calls and those are pretty cheap.
On the upside they already handle texting, making those $20/mo unlimited texting plans redundant. Now we just need EU-like cell plans where "caller pays" and we'd be all set - you can complete google voice calls as inbound to yourself via the mobile and full web pages. Oddly the Android client doesn't offer this feature.
Great SMS-email relay (Score:2, Interesting)
I hope they're ready for the additional load (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Google Voice (previously Grand Central) for years. It's been great to have a stable phone number - home phone or cell phone numbers may change but just tweak the configuration and your Google Voice number is still good. It's worth much more than the price (free) for just this. But there's more!
When AT&T couldn't figure out how to sign me up for home phone service I started looking into VOIP service - I wanted something with a normal looking and acting telephone that didn't require a computer to work. Gizmo5 provided the answer; they provide standard SIP service which is compatible with numerous SIP phones. With Google Voice forwarding to my Gizmo5 SIP line I've got the best of both worlds - free incoming calls and 1 cent per minute for outbound calls to anywhere in the US, Canada and the European Union. I've been using this setup for over 8 months now and it works great - very good call quality and very reliable service. My total phone bill for those 8 months is just under four dollars.
Gizmo5 has been closed to new accounts for months now so those who wish to follow in these footsteps will have to wait. And I suspect there's going to be a lot of legal challenges before this is available to all; with good SIP phones (I'm using some Grandstream phones and they're OK) it's almost indistinguishable from AT&T service and many of the features you'd pay extra for from AT&T are free. This will severely impact AT&T's business - as well as the cable companies, Vonage, Magic Jack, etc. who are selling VOIP service at a big profit. The lawsuits should start flying soon and it's going to be interesting to see how those big operators state their case when everyone sees that they're selling very little more than nothing.
Google Voice and Gizmo5 together is powerful stuff and it's going to shake the telecommunications industry from top to bottom when this is available to everyone. I wonder how far away that day will be...
Wildfire connected incoming calls to other numbers (Score:3, Interesting)
"Wildfire smooths the process of completing calls and helps you be more available to callers. The system does a good job of identifying callers, so you spend much less time than before tapping numbers into the dialpad or looking up information in your Filofax or PIM. For example, the informed call waiting feature asks callers to speak their name, then plays that in your ear only (regardless where you're calling from) so you can decide what to do. If you ignore the call, Wildfire takes a message. If Wildfire identifies the caller by recognizing the name, she can take further action."
Re:I want unlimited data (Score:2, Interesting)
If you have to pay for data use, *and* cell minutes, what the point of voip other then security?
I've been waiting for Gizmo to open up again so that I can set up an account for my VOIP desk phone. I couldn't care less if my cell phone can do VOIP, but I haven't had a land line at home for a decade and it would be nice to have an ISP neutral option for SIP.
slashdot.us (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, let them change the domain to slashdot.us and allow only USA/Canada IPs?
Not like we (rest of the World) didn't get used to that kind of (Godwin) for a long time.