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Re: Google Voice

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Alek wrote:

> M.L. wrote on 8/9/2016 7:19 PM:
>> 
>>>Do you use Google Voice on your personal cell phone?
>>>
>>>I was surprised to see that minutes on a GV call were being counted
>>>against my plan minutes. I had thought they were free.
>> 
>> As others have stated, Hangouts allows you to send/receive free calls
>> with your GV number.
> 
> Can I call people who do not use hangouts?

No.  Hangouts alone is just an IP chat client.  When you load Hangouts,
all you see is the chat panel.

You need to install the Hangouts *Dialer* app.  This is a add-on to the
Hangouts app.  After installing Hangouts Dialer, you will see 2 panels
in the Hangouts app: chat and call.

The Hangouts Dialer works with a Google Voice account and connects to GV
hubs to connect outside of the Internet.  To get from Internet to
telco/POTS or cellular means a POP (Point of Presence) for IP to
telephony conversion.  That would be Google when using Hangouts.

Without a Google Voice account, you might be able to dial out via wifi
to connect to landline and cell phones.  I haven't tried this.  I've
never needed a dial-out only phone.  If I'm calling family, friends,
coworkers, dentists, my bank, the car shop, etc then I also want them to
be able to call me back (on the same phone number).

Get a Google Voice account.  Use the number they assign to you, or port
(~$20) your old phone number (the one your family, friends, and everyone
else you told knows about) to the Google Voice account.  Make sure
Hangouts is logging into your Google account (which will use the Google
Voice service associated with that Google account).  I already had a
Gmail account so setting up Google Voice was just doing the config for
it, like adding the phones that I want it to call for inbound calls.

Google Voice is not a wifi-only telephony service.  Neither are they
landline (POTS) or cellular only.  Those calling into your GV number
have to provide their own means of connecting to it.  GV has to use its
own landlines or cellular service or VOIP (for Internet) to call out
which means you have to pay for landline service, cellular service, or
Internet service (which includes wifi) to get incoming calls forwarded
through GV to your own phones.  At home, you can use the wifi for your
Internet service (that you pay for).  Elsewhere you can borrow wifi
access that others have provided (sometimes free, sometimes not,
sometimes with no registration/login, sometimes not, sometimes time
limited, sometimes not).  When away from home, you would be using
someone ELSE's wifi access to their Internet service to use VOIP to
handle the phone call.

>> The GV smartphone app allows you to place carrier calls that use your
>> GV number as the caller ID. It also can display your GV inbox
>> messages.
> 
> And that is a plus because??

Do you want someone responding to your call going out on a GV "line" to
come back on your landline or cell phone directly?  Why?  You called
them from GV so why don't you want them calling you back via GV?  

You call call GV so your call to the intended callee shows your GV
number in the Caller ID that the callee sees.  Or you can directly dial
the callee and your caller ID will show the phone you actually used to
call them.  It's your choice.

Just remember that if you are using "free" wifi to call out to someone
and showing them your cell phone number in your Caller ID then that is
likely the number on which they will call you back.  So you call out
free but they call you back using your cellular minutes.  If you're
going to do the setup to call out for free, don't you also want calls in
to be free?

In the Google Voice app, you can configure how that app handles outbound
calls from your smartphone.  You can choose one of the following:

- Use Google Voice to make all calls.
  (Callees see your GV number in your CID.)
- Do not use Google Voice to make any calls.
  (All calls go out using your cellular service.  Your phone still gets 
  called when someone uses your GV number - having one number to call 
  all your phones makes it easy for callers because they only have one 
  number to remember for you.)
- Only use Google Voice for international calls.
  (GV calls to USA and Canada are free. Intl calls cost money but Google 
  has low rates.  Folks making lots of intl calls want low per-minute 
  rates, so this would help ensure they get Google's low intl rates.)
- Ask every time I make a call.
  (After dialing a number and tapping the Call button, you get a prompt 
  asking if you want the outbound call to go out through a GV hub so the 
  callee sees your GV number or through your cellular provider so the 
  callee sees your cell phone number.)

How many phones do you have?  Each has a different phone number, right?
You have a home phone number, a work phone number (maybe more than one),
a cell phone number (maybe more than one).  Is it easier for family,
friends, coworkers, or anyone to have to remember 4, or more, phone
numbers to contact you or would it be easier to know just one number?

Also, you could have multiple GV accounts, like one for personal calls
and another for your business.  That would present 2 identities to
callers that you could keep separate.  Those GV accounts might call the
same phones but the callers won't know.  They could call different
phones so as not to mix together your personal and business calls.

You get flexibility with a free PBX-like service.  How you use it is up
to you.  As with everything Google, it might disappear one day.  After
all, it costs money to Google for the servers, manpower, GV hubs, and
whatnot to provide this service and they might decide one day to drop
it.  At least it is not classed as an experiment.  Google's experiments
(aka Labs) typically have a 3 year lifespan.  If Google drops their
Google Voice service, I can fall back to the one my ISP (Comcast)
provides.  It has many of the same major features as Google Voice, like
one number that calls all your phones or however many you want.  Google
Voice lets you decide when each phone will ring, something that Comcast
has yet to add.  At night when sleeping, it's nice to have just my home
phone ring (in case of emergency) instead of my home phone and multiple
cell phones.

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Thread

Google Voice Alek <alek.trishan@gmail.com> - 2016-08-08 17:27 -0400
  Re: Google Voice nospam <nospam@nospam.invalid> - 2016-08-08 17:33 -0400
  Re: Google Voice Aardvarks <aardvarks@a.b.c.com> - 2016-08-09 09:43 +0700
    Re: Google Voice The Real Bev <bashley101@gmail.com> - 2016-08-08 20:39 -0700
  Re: Google Voice VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2016-08-08 23:20 -0500
    Re: Google Voice Alek <alek.trishan@gmail.com> - 2016-08-09 02:22 -0400
      Re: Google Voice VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2016-08-09 06:08 -0500
  Re: Google Voice M.L. <me@privacy.invalid> - 2016-08-09 18:19 -0500
    Re: Google Voice Alek <alek.trishan@gmail.com> - 2016-08-09 19:47 -0400
      Re: Google Voice VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> - 2016-08-10 01:30 -0500

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