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Making Free Phone Calls With Google's GrandCentral

Posted by timothy on Sat May 03, 2008 04:41 PM
from the you-will dept.
Communications Businesses Google The Internet
andrewmin writes with an enthusiastic pitch for Google's closed-beta call-aggregation service called GrandCentral, for which we non-beta-testers can at least reserve a number. Specifically, he's using GrandCentral in combination with Gizmo5 to make free VoiP calls. Excerpted: "Most of the time, I'm at my computer. Or near it. And if I had an internet device like a Nokia N810 or an iPod Touch, I'd have it with me 24/7. And since most of the time I'm at a place where there's a WiFi network, it makes sense for me to use VoIP rather than a regular phone line. ... I'm talking about making and receiving calls that are completely free (that is, $0.00/minute) forever (that is, no 30-day demo) for as much as you want (that is, no 30-day trial or five hour/week limit)."
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Submission: Making free phone calls with GrandCentral by andrewmin (1272402)
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  • So much for 95% of the world ...

    • This is not completely accurate. I am in Canada and I had gotten a Grand Central number. Maybe it is for US and Canada only but, how hrd is it to use a proxy in the US to register (or ask a friend to do it) and use that phone number if you want!

    • Re:Not available outside the US ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by urcreepyneighbor (1171755) on Saturday May 03 2008, @05:40PM (#23286892)

      So much for 95% of the world ...
      So fucking what?!

      I don't go to Japanese sites expecting freebies from Japanese companies for my American ass.

      If it is in Google's interest to offer this product/service to <insert your country>, they will.

      It's like the Japanese video game market. A ton of crap gets dumped in the Japanese market, because most of the companies are a) in Japan, b) it's cheaper and easier to test a new game in a local market - before potentially pissing away money on a failure.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by adlucem (1158083)
      Some of the rest of the world already has free VoIP, though. For instance, ~50% of French households have broaband, and the typical monthly fee of 30 bucks includes free VoIP (and numeric TV). The big difference of GrandCentral seems to be that it centralizes all of your phoning devices, around a unique phone number.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Max von H. (19283)

        Some of the rest of the world already has free VoIP, though. For instance, ~50% of French households have broaband, and the typical monthly fee of 30 bucks includes free VoIP (and numeric TV).

        Not only that, but the calls are free when calling no less than about 50 countries, US included. With some providers, you can can connect to your number through SIP from basically anywhere and place calls for free. Wish I had that here in Canada, where I get charged long distance whenever I call out of city limits.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by IconBasedIdea (838710)
        The service is available in every state. However, numbers in every area code and/or state are not available at all times. Your number and your location need not match.
        • Area code 603 is not available- and that covers the entire state of New Hampshire.
          • So... pick another state? Nothing says that you have to choose the state of your residence...

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by sumdumass (711423)
              I guess the point of wanting a local area code is so that it isn't long distance for everyone that you are likely to give the number out too.

              Could you imagine, Hey this is my new number that will be able to contact me anywhere I am at, you just have to call california at 10-15 cents a minute or more. but you can reach me at that number.
              • I think we're rapidly approaching the point where no one cares what area code you're in, or even country code soon. I'm already at that point. Just about everyone I know has a cell phone that can call nationwide (and Canada) at no additional cost for at least part of the day if not all the time. Plenty of people also have VoIP like Vonage or Lingo (which I have) where you can call anywhere in the US or western Europe for free any time.
        • oh, I see what you're doing!
          Step 1 - warn it's not funny
          Step 2 - ???
          Step 3 - PROFIT!!!1!!!
  • If only Google would innovate a bit ;)
      • I hope you had a sense of humor when you were born, because it's sure been ground out of you now, along with the pattern recognition wetware to recognize those funny symbols at the end of his post.

  • Damn it! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Aranykai (1053846) <slgonserNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday May 03 2008, @05:00PM (#23286660)
    Someone already reserved (314)159-2653.

  • VoIP+WiFi=mobile phone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Hunter-Killer (144296) on Saturday May 03 2008, @05:02PM (#23286680)

    And since most of the time I'm at a place where there's a WiFi network, it makes sense for me to use VoIP rather than a regular phone line.
    As someone who hates cell phones, I used a softphone (reaching back to an Asterisk server) on my laptop for a few months. Anytime I used WiFi outside my house (campus network or coffee-shop style coverage) I had nothing but problems: garbled communication, one side of the conversation not hearing anything, etc. Almost completely unusable--you know service is bad when it makes cell phone quality look fantastic in comparison.

    Anyway, Grand Central may be a replacement for a land-line phone, but I think Andrew is being a bit optimistic about the adequacy of using it as a "mobile" phone.
    • Most public wi-fi spots are so saturated with traffic that IP telphony is next to useless. When you have 50 people all swilling nasty over roasted Starbucks coffee while watching Youtube videos you are not going to get a very good IP-phone connection.

    • Re:VoIP+WiFi=mobile phone? (Score:4, Informative)

      by seidojohn (870852) <seidojohn AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday May 03 2008, @11:36PM (#23288922)
      This apparently isn't designed to replace cell phones or land lines. From what I understand from TFA:

      1. Give GrandCentral all your phone numbers (Home, Cell, Work, etc.)
      2. Tell GrandCentral when you will be around each phone
      3. Tell all your contacts you have a new phone number, and give them your GrandCentral one
      4a. Someone calls at a time which you told GrandCentral you would be at work, so your work phone rings.
      4b. Someone calls when you're on your lunch break, out of the office, and your cell phone rings.
      4c. Someone calls when you're at home, and both your cell phone and land-line ring.
      4... Repeat for whatever configuration you have set up.

      From TFA:

      With GrandCentral, you get:
      All your calls through a single number. Add your other numbers to your GrandCentral account and then make your own rules for how and when your phones ring.
      All your voicemails in one place, saved for as long as you want. If you don't answer a GrandCentral call, your callers will be sent to your GrandCentral voicemail. You can then check messages by calling your GrandCentral number, by logging into your account, or by checking the GrandCentral notification email.
      Handy features that work the same way across all your phones:
      *ListenIn as callers leave you a message
      * Record calls on the fly so you never have to fumble for a pen again
      * Switch phones mid-call without your caller knowing
      * Block annoying callers at will
      * Record custom greetings for different caller or groups of callers

      Later in TFA:

      To use GrandCentral, you just need a touch-tone phone and a Flash-enabled browser. Visit the About Adobe Flash Player page to find your version of Flash or confirm that your already downloaded it.

      Also this:

      Note: GrandCentral won't charge you for these calls; however, if you use a cell phone, regular cell phone airtime charges may apply

      Sorry for so many quotes, but if people won't look at the website they're commenting on, perhaps they'll read this... ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by hacker (14635)

        You missed one of the slickest features of GrandCentral, one which is not highly advertised...

        Let's say you have your Work, Mobile and Home numbers registered with GrandCentral.

        You receive a call to your GrandCentral number, which rings in your office at 4:50pm, and you need to catch the train down the road at 5:30, and it's a 20-minute walk.

        You accept the call in your office, have your conversation, then TRANSPARENTLY switch the call to your cellphone, continue talking there, without ever dropping th

    • Re:VoIP+WiFi=mobile phone? (Score:5, Informative)

      by a.ameri (665846) on Sunday May 04 2008, @07:26AM (#23290624)
      As part time Asterisk developer let me second the parent.

      Not only VoIP, but any real-time application is useless on nearly all current implementations of 802.x due to two major reseason:

      * Response time is too high irrespective of bandwidth. Lag is not acceptable in situations where you can't buffer. Your YouTube playback will not suffer because even a tiny buffer can eliminate the problem, but you can't buffer RT applications.

      * Most importantly, the concept of QoS, while theoretically feasible on 802.x, is completely absent from the current implementation. I have heard but I'm yet to see a real Wifi device with QoS. Without QoS, VoIP sucks.

      And then, there is also the issue of enhanced emergency services compliance, or what's in US called E911. In Australia where I live, most VoIP providers either completely block calling '000' (our emergency service number) or require you to submit a physical address for your static IP and REMAIN in that location.

      To sum it all up, if you're holding your breath for VoIP on Wifi, dream on. I've tested various VoIP clients (from the top of the market Siemens and Snom IP phones with Wifi to softphones like Counter path, etc) using various VoIP servers (Asterisk, Cisco, Nortel, etc.) using various UDP protocols (SIP, AIX2, H.323, Skinny etc.) and it DOESN'T WORK(TM).

      Until we have full end-to-end QoS support on wireless networks, or something like WiMAX which promises to drastically lower response time and lag, VoIP on wireless will remain a toy for geeks to play with and nothing more.

  • FreeWorldDialup, Asterisk and IPKall (Score:3, Informative)

    by viking80 (697716) on Saturday May 03 2008, @05:02PM (#23286688) Journal
    http://www.freeworlddialup.com/ [freeworlddialup.com] Gives anyone a free phone number forever, globally, and you can dial to and from most VOIP services.

    It works great with any VOIP SW or HW or Asterisk for a fancy home answering machine.

    If you need the POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) world to call you, http://www.ipkall.com/ [ipkall.com] will give you a free Washington phone nuumber.

    • Re:FreeWorldDialup, Asterisk and IPKall (Score:5, Funny)

      by mrbluze (1034940) on Saturday May 03 2008, @05:40PM (#23286894) Journal

      http://www.freeworlddialup.com/ [freeworlddialup.com] Gives anyone a free phone number forever, globally, and you can dial to and from most VOIP services.

      That just doesn't have the same feeling of excitement as getting up at 2am in the pouring rain, going to a telephone booth with a 555 timer chip and piezo, making freaking calls with your computer next to you plugged into the 12V socket of your car, then posting abusive messages anonymously on your favourite BBS. And all for free, man!

  • Just as Google "earns" (however indirectly) from what we search for (eg, enabling it to increase its ad revenues, by positioning "relavent" ad's beside our search results)...

    so can it (very likely) continue to earn even more, eg, automatically listening-in on our future phone conversations - using well-developed voice-to-text technologies - to gather valuable information from them.

    Perhaps we should be -paid- for each use of Google's "free" VoIP service, ie, if/when it is unfolded before us... more as harves

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by zeroduck (691015)
      I've been using the beta for a few months now, and its pretty slick. I think the intention is to charge for the service at some point. On the settings tab, they list what "plan" you have.

      Right now there is no advertising on the website or inserted into your calls.
    • Gmail *does* pay you - with a free email account.

  • Specifically, he's using GrandCentral in combination with Gizmo5 to make free VoiP calls

    He's making free phone calls to the USA. I am pretty sure he cannot call Benin or Nepal free of charge. That is the nature of the industry. Once this Google product is out, free calls will not be to every device that can receive them all over the world. Free calls will be to USA and Canada.

    By the way, can anyone tell me what determines the cost of an international call? My provider (Sprint Canada) charges an average of 49 cents/min for a call to Asia though you can use some of the many pre-paid phone car

    • Mostly it is the company you are buying the service from, and the contracts it has with terminating companies in the destination country.

      One thing to be aware of is the prepaid cards are generally given the lowest quality of service routes. The phone company already has your money, so it doesn't really care whether the call goes through or not. If you are placing the call on a billable basis then the phone company doesn't get any money if the call doesn't go through.

  • ...sooner than you think. 2015 [makingithappen.co.uk] is way off. 2009? Maybe...
  • The idea of universal and free phone access was raised in Scott Adams' "The Religion War," as a hacker's dying act to make all telephone calls in the world free. The war ends almost as quick as it began, and society rededicates itself to sustaining this new and free communication network.
  • How many of these services are there now, hundreds at least. Maybe Google should make a search engine for VoIP services, so we can compare all the freeness.
    • IPKall [ipkall.com] has offered a free inbound number (which you can use with ANY publicly-reachable SIP service worldwide, including Gizmo/sipphone) for years. The numbers are in Washington State, but will work anywhere. Super-simple to set up. And it does not do the silly ringback method (hit 1 to receive the call, etc.) that GrandCentral does.

      To -make- calls, if you have no other option, the GrandCentral web system (http://m.grandcentral.com/) is a bit clunky, but OK for residents of FreedomLand.

      (I signed u

  • I've never understood people's desire to use VOIP over WiFi on their cell phones. What is wrong with just using your phone?

    My wife and I share a family plan and we get plenty of minutes, and they roll over which is a big help because we don't have to have a plan that allows for that one month when we have higher than normal usage.

    I guess some people are on the phone constantly and have to buy a prohibitively expensive plan? But are we talking 5000 minutes or what? Business folk who are on the phone
  • I love being able to record calls, I love the call screening, and I love being able to select which number I receive calls on.

    voice mail in your email, selectable ring-ins.

    I love grand central.
  • GrandCentral - from whom I've had a number since before Google bought them - gives you the option of providing either (a) the caller's caller-ID, or (b) GrandCentral's caller-ID. If you use option (b), you give up knowing who's calling you before picking up the phone, but you can add GrandCentral to your "Fave-5" or whever you might have.

    GrandCentral will still tell you who's calling, of ocurse...
  • From the Grand Central [grandcentral.com] homepage:

    You need Flash to use GrandCentral. Get it here [adobe.com]
    Ok, is there any chance of this working with actual, published, open protocols for making and receiving calls?

    Or do I need to have Flash on my phone?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Or, in the case of Slashdotters:
      "This is Ads by Google: Is your parents' basement becoming a bit to cramped for you and your Star Wars memorabilia collection? Do you long for companionship in your life? Do you wan't to experience this sex thing people keep talking about? Visit Russian Milf Dating dot com now!"
    • No you see google has text ads, which means all us phone phreaks out there are going to finally be cool for being able to actually understand the DTMF ads google plays! I fuggin love google! *puts on his phonelosers shirt*
    • no no. it works. you just need to be connected via T1 ... and so does the party you're calling ... and they've got to be close.

      Bollocks, I say. Skype works and has the same sorts of limitations as calling overseas (call quality sucks for that regularly!).
    • I've got a Linksys SPA 2102 connected to a regular/crappy DSL line -it does traffic shaping on my home network, so it's much better than a soft phone. Calls are as clear or clearer than POTS calls, and I can get cheap or free SIP termination and DIDs in virtually any country (Acanac.com in Canada; combining them with voxalot.com). While a bit difficult to parse, there is a lot of information about providers on www.voip-info.org

      I also try to use a soft phone over my school's wireless occasionally -and I can

    • Maine just got indoor plumbing
      They only want you to have to learn one technological advance at a time. Don't want y'all to get confused, then angry, then defect to Canada. That would be awful.
    • Only if you make the call through Gizmo itself, and not GrandCentral. Through GrandCentral, it is free.

    • It will be interesting to see what their revenue model is after beta...
      That's the great thing about it. Since Google bought it, you know it will be in beta forever!
    • AFAICT, what he is doing is placing a call from the grand central address book. Google then calls your phone (or in this case the SIPphone (GIZMO) account). When you pick up, Google then dials the party you selected, and connects the two calls. I'm guessing there is some reason why he is using a sipphone (GIZMO) account rather than a regular phone. I'm not sure what the reason is. But the point is Google is making two phone calls, (only one routed over POTS though), and thus is the one footing the bill for

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