My Cellphone My Terms

What does Google voice mean for Canada?

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 expense 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 impact 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 bills!

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 as they are in trial right now. With your Google Voice invite – one method I’ve heard about (I haven’t tried this so let me know if this works) 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.

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.