Google is rounding out there VOIP offering with the purchase of SIP provider Gizmo5. The combination of a Gizmo5 account and a Google voice account had made it possible to make and receive free phone calls to your web connected Android phone. It was a little complex and involved downloading a couple of different apps and turning on/off all the right settings to get everything to work just right. Now that they are combining forces, Google should be able to make the experience more unified and simple. I’m hoping within a few months, you can download one or no apps at all and have yourself free VOIP calls to and from POTS and other cells via Google voice on your Android powered phone. Do I think that will happen? Possibly, but probably not. I’m not sure a cell service provider would like that very much, but with most of them moving to unlimited calling now and the data capped at 5GB per month, maybe it’s not a big deal to them anymore. The user either hits there minutes mark or their data mark. If the user already has unlimited minutes, why would they bother doing VOIP through the data? Maybe they want the Google Voice features, such as the voice mail transcript or the ability to block numbers, ring different phones etc. I think many of those features are already offered for your current phone number in Google Voice. We’ll see how this plays out. Heck, it might even mean Google will start charging for it’s Google Voice service. Oh, I hope not.
via computerworld
