Google Voice, Phones, Unlimited, and some such

Today I received my Google Voice invite. Do you remember when Gmail was invite-only? It's like that, for now. You can read about the features here. However, unlike Gmail, account owners don't have the ability to send invites of their own (yet?).

So what is so special about Google Voice? GV gives you the ability to have a centralized number that is a killer feature that Cisco's platform has (except you don't have to pay thousands of dollars for hardware, licenses, and monthly PRI [?] fees). The ability to give out one number to everyone, and have it ring you where ever you like, or not at all, depending on who is calling (and other rules you might set up). For instance, you could send all calls from people not in your address book direct to VM. Oh, and GV transcribes VMs direct to text, so you can just skim the message while in a meeting, the same as an email.

Ok, so pretty cool features and all that - but here is the killer feature (for now, until the telephone world is finally turned on its head) - totally free minutes and US Long Distance. With a "traditional" phone system you pay for outbound calls. Well, depending, you may pay for inbound and outbound calls - a standard business line pays both directions, residential metered phones pay both ways (but most folks have flat rate land lines for local calls), or if you've a high call volume or the pocketbook for it, with a PRI [?] you would only pay for inbound calls. For some reason, at least for now, Google is charging you nothing to use GV for all of this calling. As far as I can tell, Google should be paying for calls it has to place to your phone numbers when someone calls your GV number. Let me back up:

You give out your GV number (a regular telephone number you get to pick), and you tell Google where to send those calls (one or many phones). Oh, and one more "feature" to it. Just like when you call from your cell phone to your cell phone's number, it recognizes you and gives you access to your voicemail - so does GV. Nothing big there. But there's more. When you call your GV number, you can also place outbound calls to others and they see your GV number. This means you could call from your home phone, your cell phone, your cabin in the woods, your Mom's, etc., and all folks will see is your GV number. This is both a cool feature, and a key to having your calls handled by your GV "rules" for forwarding.

Ok, but what about unlimited/free calls? Many carriers now offer unlimited plans, often for double the cost of their other plans. These numbers might be a bit off, as I'm recalling off the top of my head: Verizon (VZN) offers their cheapest voice plan (400 minutes?) for $40, a plan for $60 (800 minutes?) with 5 friends and family calling for free, and unlimited for $130. Something like that - sorry, I don't feel inspired to look it up. Cricket and MetroPCS only do unlimited - but only in their coverage areas, which are not nearly as good as the big carriers (plus their data coverage stinks, and MetroPCS has no plans to go past 2G speeds and move to EVDO/3G speeds), so even though you can get unlimited voice for $30-40 from them, you're outta luck with a good data plan.

So here is the kicker - you will of course want to add your GV phone number to your Friends and Families list so all those calls will be unlimited. That way, when someone calls your GV number and it forwards to your cell, it'll be free. When you call your GV number to check VM, it'll be free. But here's the real gold mine: You can call your GV number and place calls to others 100% free - free thanks to GV and free thanks to your GV number being a Friends and Family number.

Ok, so that's a bit of a pain, right? Well, you could hack all your contacts to put your GV number in front, pause for 2 seconds, then put in your GV PIN, then press 2 to dial outbound, and then have it play your contact's number. Err, yeah, I was tempted, but that's a mess to your contacts list. Except someone has taken all this trouble away for you: GVDialer is a plugin for your smartphone (iPhone, Blackberry) that does this automatically for any National (US) numbers you dial. The downside? You have to wait 2 extra seconds for the extra hop through GV - but that's it, no hacking of your contacts. The upside? 100% free inbound and outbound calling (including LD) from your cell or any phone.

Google just needs to fix the SMS notification method of GV, and the wireless companies revenues are going to dry up to where they should be (in the range of ~$60/phone/month for unlimited voice/data). Right now, if someone SMS messages your GV number, you can either have GV forward the SMS on to your cell, or nowhere else (it'll be in your GV SMS inbox, but you won't know unless you check it often). They need to add an option to notify your Gmail/email account, since all smartphones have Gmail apps and can notify you, and that's all free, unlike the silly SMS charges carriers insist on - or $5 "plans" so you can send 250 SMS messages/month when you already have unlimited data and other silliness. Shoot, make it an SMS-to-GTalk bridge to make it more real-time.

I'd highly recommend you get on the Google Voice invite list and never pay for US long distance again. GV doesn't require a smartphone, nor even a cell phone. Be warned: I think it took 4 months for me to get my invite after asking for one, but that was during the Slashdot rush regarding the service. Oh, and if you get in early, you may get to pick a cool number in your area code. They'll let you search for words/number combinations and what-not in the prefixes they have. I scored with my number ending in 22-3344.