I moved my business number to GV over a year ago... it rings through to
my cell unless my cell is off, out of range or I deliberately stop
forwarding it temporarily. It instead then fields my voicemail which
it (attempts to) transcribe into both e-mail and text for my cell.
My house is in uber-marginal cell range and even with the Wilson
Electronics repeater I set up, sometimes (atmospheric conditions, cell
tower fluctuations, semis on the highway between me and the cell tower?)
I only get enough signal for the phone to ring and/or text messages to
sneak in/out but can't answer or call out effectively. (too) many of my
driving areas are also marginal (as Guerin at least can attest) so a lot
of my cell calls are a parody of "can you hear me now?".
This mostly works for me as I *rarely* want to talk to anyone real-time
anyway... I'd rather get the indication they had called, maybe even
field their question/statement and then e-mail, text or (occasionally)
call them back with an answer or a followup. Most of my family,
friends, colleagues *also* prefer e-mail/text to phone. I have 2-3
people who I know I can call and they will pick up (albeit after
screening caller ID), depending on the time of day... these are in fact
the few people I actually *want* to talk to real time. For these calls
I make sure I am somewhere with good cell coverage. Awkward since that
doesn't include *home*.
I don't use GV to answer or call out... I'm not sure why, I guess
because I was already used to using Skype for this which is somewhere
between free and cheap. I used Skype very effectively for international
calling for 3 weeks this summer while I was in Europe... as long as I
had good WiFi I was amazed at the ease/quality... I think I spent less
than $20 on Skype charges the entire time... the only thing they
couldn't fix was time-zone skew... oh well! I have used Skype (and
Viber) to call out on my mobile as well, but generally if I have the
WiFi to do that I also have the GSM and on an unlimited voice/text plan
that is just fine.
The biggest problem I have with this setup is that when *calling* people
there is no way to make the caller ID reflect my GV number, but rather
whatever cell number I have at the time. I'm on my second one since I
switched (juggling T-mo against ATT) and it is confusing to some people
who don't recognize my new(er) number yet... but as I expect with
them, I just leave a message or shoot them a txt and wait for them to
get back to ME, possibly on another band.
We are definitely in a communication "inversion" right now with things
changing chaotically or at least dramatically all the time. Neither of
my daughters has had a land line in years, my mother is now on a cell
phone, my wife doesn't answer *any* phones anyway, and I dropped *my*
office landline a while back then my home landline just a few months ago.
If GV goes away, I'm not precisely sure what I will do in response... I
haven't surveyed the options for my style of use. It is the centralized
routing, voicemail and transcription that I enjoy. And I'm ashamed to
admit, the price... free for basic services very cheap for the few calls
I make out from it. My Calvanist background makes me feel that I
shouldn't expect anything for free and I should certainly not bitch
about it if it isn't up to my expectation (see Gift Horse) and should
expect there to be a hidden hook (think Google mining/assembling my
personal information and using/selling it) somewhere.
- Steve
Hey Owen,
- GV is very easy to use, there is a talk plugin for the Chrome
browser (implied: you have to use the Chrome browser) which provides a
nice little phone dialer app. What I like about the app is that it is
integrated with your Google contacts, so looking up somebody's number
is slick. Also, the calls are crystal clear. Sometimes, rarely, a
call will drop, but not often enough to be a major issue.
- For the cell phone there is the GrooveIP Google voice Android app.
I don't know if there is an IOS equivalent.
- Don't know about transferring your landline number. Maybe you can do
that.
- I don't trust Google to not fuck this up. They are a
huge dysfunctional rich-kid bully. Spoiled, too. Arrogant, as well.
And tone deaf to the concept of "customer" (referring now to their
paying customers, as compared to people how use their free stuff,
although they seem pretty tone deaf to folks using their free stuff as
well.)
--Doug
On Fri, Mar 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Owen Densmore <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Doug: thanks, very clear.
Couple of questions:
- Is it pretty easy to setup and use?
- If you give up your landline, can you transfer it to GV so you
don't loose it?
- How comfortable are you that Google will continue the service?
-- Owen
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/Doug Roberts
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>/
/http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins/
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505-455-7333 - Office
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