FOOD FOR THOUGHT Replacement for google voice

[tritron]

What is good replacement for google voice.

 

[GregKeys]

There are any number of good VoIP providers out there with good rates. Vitelity is the first that comes to mind. However, if you are looking for a free DID, free inbound and outbound, no charges at all, GV is it. And, I suspect, GV will not be free much longer. TANSTAAFL (There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch).
PIAF comes preconfigured with trunks for many pay services that are known to be reliable.
GV is not so reliable.... You get what you pay for.
Cross connecting to the old fashion phone system, and carrying voice across it costs money. It can not be provided for free unless someone has deep pockets i.e. Google. Even someone who has deep pockets has a financial motivation for doing it.... In Googles case, they are looking for revenue from advertising. What we do bypasses that stream, and and will be counter acted as soon as the loss exceeds the cost of preventing it. Right now, I suspect, we are ignored, like a few ants at a picnic. Let the number grow and action is far more likely.

 

[Cam__]

No disrespect intended, GregKeys, but people have been saying the same thing ever since Google bought Grand Central and reopened it as Google Voice. What you are saying will probably come true... eventually. And "eventually" could mean any time from "later this month" to "decades from now" - we just don't know at this point.

Also, just because you pay for VoIP service does not automatically make it reliable, or mean that it will be around next month. Remember Sunrocket?

Even PSTN reliability is no longer a given. Just ask the people on some of the outlying islands that got hit by that big hurricane last fall (can't recall the name offhand) - Verizon now says they will never replace the damaged landlines and instead is offering some crappy wireless substitute that won't support DSL.

The only thing we can really say about anything telephone related is that 99.999% reliability no longer exists in the good ol' USA, and that though we may think we know what's going to happen with any given provider, we never really know until it happens. There is one VoIP provider (that shall remain nameless) that I've been saying should go out of business any day now for about the last five years, because their service is overpriced and increasingly unreliable - yet they still continue to hang on somehow.

 

[stanjohn]

I guess I don't get it either, as I understand it maybe google will at some point effect a change to drop the current interface used by asterisk/pbxinaflash. Fixes exist and till google makes this change we can't be sure how well they will work. The basic function of google voice does not appear to change and you should be ok as long as you have a DID to point incoming calls to and if you are unable to use the PC interface a pay as you go Voip provider to make out going calls. You should have these already in case of unforeseen problems with google. Note t-mobile's bobsled works good for me as a free PC client for free calls. I have several free DIDs and they may get short supply due to demand and also some providers may cut supply to attract customers to their paid service. I wonder if some of the panic is due to straw men posting to drive people away from the evil google who's price is hard to compete with ?

 

[GregKeys]

Somehow I missed where I said that it was reliable because you paid for it
What I said is there are several reliable paid services out there. A far different thing.....
As for GV, they may continue providing free calls for many many years, but, they are not in the business of charity. They have a serious revenue stream called advertising. What we do bypasses that revenue stream. If too many people bypass that stream, it will become worthwhile for Google to close the loopholes, tighten things up, what ever you wish to call it. Now, on the other hand, they could start playing an advertisement before the completion of any outbound call. That would return them to a revenue stream... I do not have any kind of inside info as to how the folks at google think, but it is pretty oblivious by the size of their bank account that they are motivated by money and what we do does not bring them one red dime

 

[Cam__]

I wonder if some of the panic is due to straw men posting to drive people away from the evil google who's price is hard to compete with ?

You mean like those who post that people are rushing to port their Google Voice numbers over to some other particular VoIP company? I've wondered if such posts aren't mostly hype and wishful thinking.

Reminds me of how Johnny Carson cracked a joke about there being a toilet paper shortage and people took him seriously and scooped all the toilet paper off the shelves and hoarded it, creating a real shortage. Maybe some of these VoIP companies are hoping they can make that same effect work for them.

 

[Cam__]

Somehow I missed where I said that it was reliable because you paid for it
What I said is there are several reliable paid services out there. A far different thing.....
As for GV, they may continue providing free calls for many many years, but, they are not in the business of charity. They have a serious revenue stream called advertising. What we do bypasses that revenue stream. If too many people bypass that stream, it will become worthwhile for Google to close the loopholes, tighten things up, what ever you wish to call it. Now, on the other hand, they could start playing an advertisement before the completion of any outbound call. That would return them to a revenue stream... I do not have any kind of inside info as to how the folks at google think, but it is pretty oblivious by the size of their bank account that they are motivated by money and what we do does not bring them one red dime

Sorry if I misinterpreted what you said. And I don't necessarily disagree with you, but Google might have other motives in this particular case. Think about it, Google is a content provider, and one of their biggest properties is YouTube. And what is one of the things standing in the way of them being able to do unlimited streaming of content? It's telco ISP's and their slow connections and bandwidth caps. Unfortunately the creaky old telephone companies still have far too much political clout, much of which is used to have their way at the FCC. So it would not surprise me if at least some of their thinking is that if they can get people to stop paying the traditional phone companies, that weakens one of their strongest opponents. Given the volume of business Google Voice does, I would bet they get great rates on calls, so providing the service might not be costing them as much as you would think.

Also, if they have any plans to expand their fiber offerings, they may be thinking that some of their customers will need a way to make phone calls, and Google Voice fills that gap. That is actually one reason I doubt XMPP will go away without any warning, because I'll bet more than a few of their fiber customers use Obihai devices and Google Voice as a replacement for phone service. They can't actually admit that, though, and may not even want to know about it, because Google Voice is not supposed to be a substitute for real phone service - that would get them into regulatory issues they probably don't want to deal with.

The reason Google Voice is in such a murky area is that they do not want to be considered to be a real telephone company. Real phone companies are subject to a whole bunch of archaic regulations that were drawn up back when your great-grandparents had horses and eight-party lines. So they absolutely cannot come out and say they are offering phone service, or even hint that they are trying to induce people to drop their landlines, but it wouldn't surprise me if some Google officials are secretly delighted when that happens.

 

[kenn10]

As Comcast continues to grow and overtake the landline business from at&t and other ILECS....... Of course, Google does not offer E911 which is pretty much a deal killer for many. That is one of those nagging regulations that a "real" phone company has to deal with. Meanwhile at&t is doing their best to move all voice and data transport to an all IP "next generation" network and thus sidestep many regulations they have with copper and analog delivery of service. They could get away from annoyances such as a requirement to provide service in non-profitable areas.

There will be much maneuvering in the future I'm sure. We need some pure IP delivery companies where you buy a pipe and layer on whatever services you want. Hmmm. Sounds kinda like Google fiber. Time will tell.

 

[tm1000]

I take some offense to this. Since it was MY company that posted that information. We have valid numbers to back this up and MY company also paid to have ME work on the google voice module AND the google voice xmpp fixes to asterisk.

So whatever "hype" or "game" we are playing would confuse me.

PS MY Company is Schmoozecom, Owners of Sipstation and the FreePBX Trademark.

You mean like those who post that people are rushing to port their Google Voice numbers over to some other particular VoIP company? I've wondered if such posts aren't mostly hype and wishful thinking.

 

[phoneguy]

Cam

Not sure what you problem is but I wont be silent while you take jabs at us. You took jabs on previous post in the past and doing it again. If you have a problem feel free to call or email me. I am open and willing to talk with anyone that has a valid complaint and anyone here who knows me knows this. Just please knock off the jabs. It is not productive.

 

[Cam__]

WTF? When did I take jabs at you guys in the past? I certainly don't recall doing so. And in any case, I was simply commenting on another user's post, and honestly didn't remember who had posted that information. In fact after I posted it I remember thinking it might have been Ward, and was momentarily a little concerned I might have offended him, but then realized he doesn't own a company that does number porting.

At the risk of offending you further, I will say that now I'm thinking you protest too much. Yes, I did find it hard to believe that people are flocking to get their numbers ported merely because Google announced they are dropping XMPP support for hangouts, but if you say you have the numbers to back it up, then fine, you could have just said that and it would have been your word against my doubts, which aren't worth squat. But it was not my original intent to attack you guys, I was just making conversation in a forum thread and mentioning something that I personally found a bit hard to swallow - and if I were to be honest, I'm still a bit incredulous, but I assure you it's nothing personal. Grow a thicker skin and don't be so easily offended, nobody is attacking you, at least I'm not!

 

[GregKeys]

Time for a lock.... This is not helping anyone.

 

[phoneguy]

Nah I made my peace and moved on.

 

[tm1000]

Anyways if it does come down to it and google shuts off xmpp then I will take the work cam has done and incorporate it into the google voice module in freepbx and everyone will be happy.

 

[Hyksos]

You would surely extract that out of the full fledged asterisk GUI he wrote with 47 years of effort and shared with millions of people for free during the last decade.
No attack intended, but you guys are whiny sensitive non-credible liars anyway? Nothing personal of course...

 

[reconwireless]

Dagnabbit my plans for world domination foiled once again! I just know if I can get all of these people that are used to paying nothing for their GV on our sip service I can rake in literally hundreds of dollars!

Seriously even the official Google Voice forums tell you:

• It is not advised that you use Google Voice services for your business as we do not provide enterprise support. Please use at your own discretion.
• Plus don't forget there is no e911 on GV, which should be a deal breaker for any business

Prior to all of the XMPP stuff coming out, I had to do research in how to port GV numbers, because we had clients looking to move to a service provider that's core business is telephony and provides enterprise support of it's products. As much fun as GV is to play with, and it's definitely a lot easier with the Motif module, it is still a Google Experiment and can be relegated to the Google Graveyard at any time. Many people that started small businesses with a GV number are now looking to move to something that provides more consistency and commercial support.

My personal take on the GV deal is that Google has zero incentive to make it easy for PBX's to interface with GV, outside of the fact that you are not using the Official Google interface, which I'm sure doesn't make them too happy. Their official software makes it tough to make outbound calls because you must use some type of web interface, notice they never enabled SIP (except for about a week a couple years ago.) My guess is that with millions of GV users, that can receive calls easier than they can make them, that they are probably making a bit of money on call termination from their interconnect partners. Meaning that the traditional copper and cable companies are paying them for call termination. Fractions of a penny per call, but with millions of customers it could be substantial. Then again I'm not privy to those financials, and it could be costing them more to terminate the outbound calls... who knows. It's apparent they have some plans for GV with the integration of Hang Outs, but it's still an unknown. As of this post my Google voice calls are still working, so XMPP is still alive, so the whole XMPP thing could be a non starter, but the fact that Google Voice is an experiment is likely not going to go away for awhile, until they decide it's ultimate fate.

 

[Cam__]

You would surely extract that out of the full fledged asterisk GUI he wrote with 47 years of effort and shared with millions of people for free during the last decade.
No attack intended, but you guys are whiny sensitive non-credible liars anyway? Nothing personal of course...

The fallacy in your little dig is that you assume I know who all the players are around here, and if/how they might be connected to PiaF or FreePBX. Other than Ward and tm1000, I really have no idea who might or might not be associated with these projects (and I only figured out that tm1000 was connected to FreePBX relatively recently). Maybe there should be a sticky post explaining who the major personalities are on this forum, particularly those that are developers or major contributors to one of those projects.

Really, it was just a general comment that wasn't intended to offend any one person or organization in particular. In general it just irritates me when a company or organization tries to use fear, uncertainty and doubt to cause people to spend money they wouldn't otherwise have spent. It's why if, for example, I see a commercial on TV that implies that I or a loved one might DIE if I don't purchase a certain product or service, hell will freeze over twice before I ever buy from that company. This just felt a little bit like that to me, though it's entirely possible I took it wrong, and in retrospect it occurs to me that in all probability nobody's making big bucks on this. But I certainly did not intend to attack anyone personally, especially when I was just typing a quick response to someone else's post. And when it's over and people are cooling down, I don't really think it's appropriate for someone else to jump in and fan the flames.

 

[phoneguy]

Ahhh I guess my signature below is not enough. Maybe I will work up a cool banner to inject.

Tony Lewis
Schmooze Com, Inc./FreePBX

 

[tm1000]

My biggest problem is I think too many people use google voice for more than they should. I think it's a cool service and its a fun experiment but my clients don't use google voice. They use real sip providers with terms of service that allow one to connect to them and that actually have a documented way to connect to them and that have real people you can complain to on the phone and who actually take real responsibility for outages.

Google doesn't have any of that and they won't tell you if they are going to keep using the service or scrap it or charge for it or what. They have no answer just so they can take it away whenever they feel like it and tell you all that "well we never said x"

And it bothers me when people stick up for google voice and/or find hacky methods to make it work just so they can have free phone calls. What is this napster? That's just my personal opinion and I do a lot of work with google voice and xmpp.

No attacks or anything to anyone.

 

[Cam__]

tm1000, sorry but I like free phone calls and I will continue to stick up for Google Voice to some extent, although I agree that they can take it away at any time and that it's probably not a great solution for anyone running a business. I especially agree that it is frustrating as hell when there is an outage and people are left hanging until someone at Google decides to do something about it, because there's nothing resembling a support system. In fact many things about Google tick me off, but they are not really pertinent to this thread.

Still, for home users that also have a cell phone, Google Voice might be the greatest thing since sliced bread in my opinion, because you can do a lot with Google Voice and you are not paying big bucks to a phone company for landline service that you probably rarely use. Everyone has different needs and standards so some may consider it an inadequate replacement for a landline - yes, 911, yada, yada, but if you have a cell phone handy then you have a way to call 911.

What falls into kind of a grey area is the person running a very small business, that simply may not be able to afford a cell phone AND a landline, especially at business rates. Or maybe someone that wants "local" numbers in several nearby communities. There is a calculated risk in using Google Voice in such an application but if you can't afford the blue ribbon service from the phone company then Google Voice is better than nothing. And there are those who would say that someone that can't afford real phone service they shouldn't be in business to begin with, but I am not that mean-spirited - these are tough times for a lot of people. But such people absolutely need a way to call 911 if they ever have customers or employees on their premises.

So, yes, I'm likely exactly the sort of person who would bother you by the way I use Google Voice, and sometimes you might say or do something that bothers me, but people disagree on many things and that doesn't make either of us bad people. I appreciate your many and varied contributions and all the hard work you have done on FreePBX, and some of your concerns about Google Voice are quite valid. But many of us only have a limited amount of money to spend, and after that sacrifices have to be made, and when there is an opportunity to get a service for free we'll take advantage of it for as long as it's available.