No matter what people say I am a big fan of Google, be it Search, Gtalk, Google apps for my custom domain or blogger. Well the new offering from it’s basket is google voice, we have already reported google’s voice transcribe service, the news is that Google has now gone a step forward in unifying communication.
Get a google voice phone number with a local area code and add all your landline and cell-phone numbers to the account, when someone calls your voice number all the registered numbers ring at the same time.
One can also do a voice call by clicking a reply or call on google voice and google calls your number and connects to the dialled number and everything for free. A similiar process is followed by several other VOIP services like jaxtr but it seems Google voice is quite advanced to these services.
What is different?
What google has done here is that it has interconnected VOIP, voice transcription and call routing and connected it to web. “The extra piece of equipment is a VoIP gateway, which interconnects the PSTN [a standard telephone line] and SIP [the digital line] services. I would expect their data centers will have large racks of these,” says Rob Enderle, founder of the research company Enderle Group. “Google Voice translates an SIP address into a phone line, converting the digital data stream to an analog stream and then allowing the line to connect.” as quoted on technologyreview.
If you already use any of the VOIP services, you know that time delays (Latency) in the interaction is a serious problem with VOIP, but as John Brandon of technology review put’s it “if any company can handle tremendous call volumes, expand computer clusters quickly, and reduce latency issues, it is Google.”
The real bummer is this will not be available for a Indian user any soon. But its good to know such services are being worked on. Hopefully one day it’ll come to India and hopefully our telecom operators don’t block it for any stupid reason.
Didn’t you know that Grandcentral existed years before you heard the name ‘Google Voice’ and got so excited.
Do a little homework bro…
hi Anony,
thanks for the comment,If you don’t know Google voice is the next version of Grandcentral and has got more features.
Phoen.com just soft launched Virtual Number which has additional features to Google Voice, such as NO ads and it allows you to port your own number. It can be found at: http://www.phone.com/products/virtual-number/