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What does Google voice mean for Canada?

Posted on February 6th, 2010Yale Holder
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Can Google Voice transform our cell phone industry?

Unlimited calling across Canada

What does Google Voice mean to Canadians? Quite simply the possibility of unlimited calling! Google Voice is a telecommunications service based on Personal numbering, which means that the service is independent of your cell phone, home phone or instrument and attached to you, hence personal.  This means that you finally have a form of unlimited calling on your cell phone regardless of which cell phone company or carrier you use.  This is the same sort of service that Wind Mobile is trying to achieve with its unlimited calling plans. Unfortunately Google Voice is only available in the US, although I have heard about a work around that can get it working in Canada, read on.

Restrictions by Cell phone companies a possibility

With Canada as the third most expensive country to use cell phones…. in the world – this will be a welcome reprieve for all Canadians. My main concern however, is that I simply doubt whether a 20 billion industry will sit back and remain idle while Google Voice impacts their margins. In fact, I believe there will be some form of restriction placed on cell phones in Canada by the cell phone companies themselves. I certainly hope not! Rather I would hope that this too will signal the need to be more creative with their plans for everyone concerned. Should I hold my breath?

The end of wireless number portability?

Google Voice would allow Canadians to be detached from their device. If you’ve ever been caught in the nightmare of transferring your number from one cell phone to another at a different company then you will understand that the need to go through this process is reduced significantly as you would still have your Google voice 1 number. This will allow consumers to switch between carriers without needing to keep their old number because they can login to their Google voice service and redirect calls to the new number.

Lower bills due to calling and features swap

There is an impressive array of features available by Google Voice, including:

  • One Personal number: one phone number that rings all or a select group of your phones
  • Free SMS: It’s all online so it free:, sending and receiving
  • Block calls: send your bosses number – I mean select callers straight to voicemail
  • Conference calling: join several people into a single call
  • Google voicemail: voicemail like email
  • Voicemail transcription: read what your voicemail says
  • Custom greetings: nothing new but you can have different voicemail greetings by caller
  • Low cost calls: unlimited calls in north American and low cost International calling
  • Notifications: read voicemail messages via email or SMS

Given this impressive array of features, why do I need to pay for these same features on my existing cell phone, can someone say lower cell phone bills!

The main benefit of leveraging Google voice would be cheaper cell phone bills.  If you are looking to get a new cell phone or looking to upgrade don’t just walk into a store a get one, leverage this free service to get the best cell phone deals in Canada.

Getting Google Voice to work in Canada

In order to get Google Voice to work in Canada, you must have an invitation from Google to use the service. With your Google Voice invite – one method my colleague has successfully used is to get a magic jack to circumvent the US number restriction. So essentially:

  • You need to acquire and install a MagicJack with a US phone number
  • With your US phone number you can activate your Google Voice service and choose a personal number
  • The final step is to forward your MagicJack to your Canadian Cell phone and you are good to go.

This is it in a nutshell for more get the full step by step process.

The one caveat is that Canadians may have some reservation with using an online based telecommunications service not sanctioned by their cell phone company. And given the experience some customers have had with VoIP services in the past they may be some hesitation to jump on board. But that remains to be seen. My expectation is that Google Voice will come to Canada at the end of 2010 or early in 2011.

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12 comments Industry News, Technology, The Cell Phone Blog , , , , ,
  • Ali

    what features do you have to have with your service provider to use this app, i.e. unlimited data?

  • Kami

    Since VoIP requires approximately 100 Kbps of bandwidth to use for good quality sound, you’re using around 13 Kilobytes per second, or 750 KB (0.74 MB) per minute; given that most providers have lowest Data buckets of 500 Megabytes per month, that allows for roughly 680 minutes of talk time per month — billed to the second I should note. Add another 500 MB of data to your plan for average Data-usage per month, and you have a reasonable all-round plan if Google Voice is useable.

    Since that would only require data, you’d be okay with using a data-only plan. Hey, it gives us something to do with that old Internet stick that’s still kicking around on commitment.

  • Kyle

    Apparently Calgary (area code 403) works on Google Voice

  • admin

    Hi Kyle,
    Thank you for your comment.
    Can you share a little more on how you set it up.
    Thanks,
    Kye

  • steve

    i moved from the the states to Toronto and, IMMEDIATELY i realized how the cell phone companies (telecom)in general are ripping massive profits by taking advantage of their Canadian Customers, its NUTS, and for this reason i opted not to get a cell phone. This was not an easy decision for someone who has had unlimited voice, unlimited txt and nation wide plans for over 7 yrs all at a cost of $100. essentially this means i didnt have to watch my minutes in anyway or shape infact i didnt even have cds in my car i was streaming all my music through my phone. but it had to stop once i moved to Toronto.

    Anyway back to the point GV is amazing period, it gave me flexibility that my providers could dream of, because to them it would how can we get another $ from our beloved customer( and this is what /canadians are facing at the moment but things are about to change now that they have opened the doors to foreign competitors) and ontop of that unlimited calling to Canada for $0, i repeat $0. in the early 2000′s i was paying 350 a month on LD to Canada.

    and if you have a gmail account all your contacts are integrated, plus if you have a smart phone like blackberry it even gets easier.

    in all honesty its the one thing i really miss since i moved to Toronto. i am looking into get a plan with Wind because they are the closest thing to what i was used.

    steve

  • anthonbe

    Fring works just fine for now. And all you need is a skype account.

  • Thomas

    I have had Google Voice for about 7 months. The calls are forwarded to a Calgary area code and it works well. I can use the Blackberry or iPhone GoogleVoice app to make free unlimited local calls to Canada and the US. However, I could not pick a Calgary GoogleVoice number, only a US one. The functionality on theh cell is quite seamless. This is of great help to make long distance calls from the cell phone. Not having a 403 GoogleVoice number does not allow me to easily give out the GoogleVoice number, so I get only half of its functionality.

  • Sharron

    Okay, everyone says its possible to use in Canada but noone tells you how to get the invite from US or how to setup with blackberry or any other device for that matter…someone must have a link to help another out =] with anticipated smiles

  • Kye

    Thanks for sharing with us Joseph.

  • GVuser

    What is so useful about GV then ? besides making incoming/outgoing calls ? the display will be the google voice number, if you live in canada, how people can reach you if it’s a US number ?
    I tried GV months ago, the quality is not good, you can’t use the keypad to select automatic voice selections, no use at all, there’s quite a delay as well

  • Tips

    THERE IS a solution for this!!! — You get a SkypeIn Number and forward your GV number to Skype. With SkypeIn it is possible to “change called id” so you can set it to whatever number you want and when you use gv number it will forward to skypn number and that will then forward to whatever number you want with whatever caller id you want! You can also acquire a 403 number from freephoneline.ca and this is the only canadian number that GV will forward to in Canada. However – freephoneline.ca will only forward PHONE CALLS and not text numbers… you will have to text from your GV number and there is no way to change your caller id on text messaged (that I know of).

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