The new tools becoming available to telephone users have put the companies that carry our calls in a dicey situation.
The last thing a telephone company wants to be is a set of "dumb pipes," simple conduits for content created, managed and surcharged by third parties. But our increasingly powerful smart phones put all kinds of new options for handling voice messaging, text, e-mail and Web access inside our handheld devices. And products like Google Voice threaten to leverage that power to wrest user fees out of the telcos' hands.
Already used by a million people while still in a limited beta release, Google Voice is now available to the public at large. The free service (google.com/voice ) was once known as GrandCentral, introduced in 2006 and acquired by Google the following year. The $50 million Google paid for the acquisition may pay off handsomely, for Google Voice tackles the frustrations phone users face daily and offers interesting solutions.
Take the multiple phone problem. Most business people today have, in addition to their home number, a cell phone and an office phone, and sometimes more. Google Voice makes it possible to ring all of these phones using the same local number. It also consolidates all the messages in your voicemail inboxes, so that you can manage them wherever you are without having to call multiple numbers and remember various passwords to access your calls.
This is pretty lively stuff, not only because it saves you time, but also because it makes it easier for you to change mobile carriers without having to worry about keeping your phone number. A call made through Google Voice is routed through the telephone network to Google's cloud-based computers, from which it is sent to its final destination. Whatever telco you use, you keep the same Google phone number, which rings on your new service whenever you switch. In this model, wireless and wire-line communications are united through one number.
That number, of course, could be a problem for some people, and it's the biggest disadvantage to Google Voice. Sign up for the service and you choose a new number and area code, which means you have to let all your contacts know about the new number. This involves collateral issues like printing new business cards, no small inconvenience.
Read your messages
But Google Voice now makes it possible to add some of its features to an existing phone number. You miss out on the ability to screen incoming calls, record them and forward them, but you do retain a powerful voicemail capability that includes transcription.
Here's how it works: Messages left in your voicemail show up on your PC, or on your phone as text messages, turned into text through Google's transcription service. The transcriptions are iffy, but you can usually get the gist of the message, and it's helpful to manage voice messages this way if you're in a noisy environment or can't use voice to respond. Google Voice lets you answer voicemail withe-mail or free text messaging. Moreover, you can set up different voicemail greetings depending on who's calling, individually or by groups.
Whether Google Voice is for you depends on your attitude toward acquiring a new, single phone number. I'm not centralizing my various numbers because it's too big a hassle, but setting up Google Voice's voicemail features on an existing number makes sense.
Understand that this is not a phone service like Skype but a way to manage your phones, creating your own specifications for how they ring and how you manage their messages. It's easy to access your calls from your phone or the Web and to block problematic callers.
See why the telcos are anxious about a product like this? The push is on to develop better digital features for their customers as they look warily at Google's powerful base of third-party developers, whose innovations will make Google Voice an attractive alternative.
