One Telephone Number. Will Ring Wherever You Want. For Free. Permanently.

Contributor: Stephen Fells

If you want to contact me you have lots of choices. There’s obviously email (multiple accounts), there’s Facebook (and LinkedIn and YouNoodle and countless other social networks), there’s twitter (@netearth), via this blog, that blog and the other blog. And there’s fax, one for the East cost, another for the West coast.

By telephone you have even more choice. There’s my mobile, my direct line, three toll free number’s and my home telephone number.

Then there’s the telephone number for our social application development company and the AgencyLogic private label support number. Need I go on? The problem with telephone numbers is a common one; we all have more than one number and it gets really complicated if we ever move home or job.

How about having one number that works anywhere, anytime and can be configured so that some people go to voicemail, others to your mobile phone and a select few to all of your telephone numbers. Oh and it will be your number forever. And it’s from Google so guess how much it won’t cost?

Welcome to your Google phone number.

Currently available by invite only the feature set is impressive:

Call screening – Announce and screen callers

Listen in – Listen before taking a call

Block calls – Keep unwanted callers at bay

SMS – Send, receive, and store SMS

Place calls – Call US numbers for free

Taking calls – Answer on any of your phones

Phone routing – Phones ring based on who calls

Forwarding phones – Add phones and decide which ring

Voicemail transcripts – Read what your voicemail says

Listen to voicemail – Check online or from your phone

Notifications – Receive voicemails via email or SMS

Personalize greeting – Vary greetings by caller

Share voicemail – Forward or download voicemails

Conference calling – Join people into a single call

Call record – Record calls and store them online

Call switch – Switch phones during a call

Mobile site – View your inbox from your mobile

GOOG-411 – Check directory assistance

One word. WOW!

This video is a great overview:

But what about mobile? That’s covered too. Google Voice has a mobile app for Blackberry and Android-powered phones:

What’s that one word again?

Tagged as: Free, Google, Telephone, Voice