As I like to travel outside the United States, it's nice to keep in touch with family and friends back home. Most of my friends and family have iPhones, but there are the few who do not.
It would be easy to communicate with my iOS friends, via FaceTime and iMessage using my apple ID, but how would I be able to call or text the people that do not have an iPhone, or perhaps I would need to call a business such as my credit card company or change my travel plans and have to speak to Expedia.
After reading plenty of information online about GV (Google Voice), I decided to experiment.
At first I selected to use a new GV number provided by Google which you can select (there are many) while going through the very easy process of setting up GV.
Now that I had a new GV number I wanted to test it out so I downloaded the Google Voice app and Google Hangouts app (you can call from your computer as well). After installing the apps on my iPhone I text my sister through Hangouts stating that I was testing out a new number and to please reply. She replied. I then went on to try to call her, it worked!
All of which was happening over my wifi connection, there was no data usage as I was strictly using wifi. GV is VoIP.
One of the main reasons that I wanted/needed a GV number was so that I could communicate with the US from outside of the US free of charge using strictly a wifi connection.
I'm in India at the moment typing this blog post. I have been here for three weeks and so far I have called: Expedia, HSBC and my mother, all from my GV number and all to US numbers over a wifi connection 100% free of charge.
I had an issue with flight reservation and was on the phone with Expedia for 45 minutes without a dropped call, of course that relied on my wifi connection, which fortunately did not cut out or happen to have a power outage, I'm in India at the moment and power outages occur here at least once a day.
Google Voice is the way to go for me personally as I tend to travel outside the US and or change carriers. After a couple weeks of experimenting with GV I decided to port my phone number of 15 years to GV for a one time fee. Google is my carrier.
You can only set up a GV number while being in the US or your IP address has to be a US IP address.
Also, whomever you call does not have to have any Google product or service, they have no idea that you are using a GV number, they simply receive your call as if you were calling from any service carrier from the number which you are using.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns let me know.
Thanks!
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