GrandCentral Voip Is Now Google Voice
GrandCentral Voip Is Now Google Voice
GrandCentral, a phone management service which was first launched in 2006 and was
acquired by Google in year 2007 hasn’t been in the news much lately.
Google has finally rebranded GrandCentral into Google Voice after a very long time. GrandCentral is a powerful VOIP integration service . It is a service integrating flexible Internet-based voice calling and routing features, voice mail, text messaging and other applications.
This move of Rebranding GrandCentral into Google Voice would really open up multiple avenues for google in the coming years mainly in the integration space. It would rather be interesting to see if they would integrate Google Talk into Google voice or they would add Google voice to Google talk.
Unlike other VoIP and Internet-based voice applications, Google Voice is mainly based on a centralized voice calling and messaging system which enables users to use any phone to call into a system that allows them to initiate other calls and functions. The offering is being seen as a challenge to Skype, though it also ups the competitive ante for telcos and other voice service providers that have been exploring new ways to offer voice or to integrate it with other applications.
Below listed are few of the salient features of Google Voice.
Google number – One number for all your calls and SMS
It has a distinguishing feature of announcing and screening callers
It has the feature of Listening before taking a call
It Keeps unwanted callers at bay
It sends, receives, and stores SMS
It Calls US numbers for free
It Answer on any of your phones and add phones and decide which ring
Google voicemail – Voicemail as easy as email, with transcripts
It reads what your voicemail says
It checks online or from your phone
It Receives voicemails via email or SMS and Forwards or downloads voicemails
Voice features – More cool things you can do with Google Voice
Enables to Join people into a single call
It Records calls and store them online
It helps to view your inbox from your mobile and check directory assistance
It sets preferences by group
One of the important feature of Google Voice is obviously allowing totally free calls any USA number including mobile.
Also the quality of the calls doesn’t change with Google Voice. Getting your calls through Google Voice won’t affect call quality or reception, since you’ll still be taking calls from your existing phones.
Currently at this stage, Google voice is restricted to existing GrandCentral users only. However, if they open up the doors to this existing VOIP service to anyone anywhere in the world , one can leverage the benefit of having one number for call management.
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2 Responses to “GrandCentral Voip Is Now Google Voice”
Comment from Anonymous
Time July 4, 2009 at 7:01 am
The quality of the calls I've experienced is perfect. I've had GV for about a week and GC for over 1 year; before the transition (GC to GV) the ability to make free calls was restricted to pressing "2" during or after a phone message was playing and sometimes this didn't work properly. I've had absolutely no problems now. I love Google Voice.
Comment from Richard
Time April 17, 2009 at 10:27 am
Call quality isn’t 100% perfect – I find there is a bit of latency added, which is tolerable when both ends of a call are land lines, but gets a bit annoying when both ends are cell phones. However, the convenience of “one number” is good, and the ability to place free calls is certainly a nice feature.