1 Phone Number 4 Life

I just signed up, but there is obviously one problem....

you have to get a new number, and then send out that new number to everyone. you'd have to change your business cards, have all your contacts update their address books, etc.

I don't know if I'm willing to go through all that pain or not. Some other questions. Is it really 1 number for life, or just 1 number for life assuming you don't move out of the city. Sure, more and more long distance versus local doesn't matter, but still, if I move to another city and get another job, it makes absolutely no sense for me to have a 713 area code number for work while everyone else in the city is on some other area code. Unless I'm missing something.

Otherwise, it sounds sweet, especially considering its free.

EDIT: Okay, I tested it by calling myself. It got my voicemail up on the net super-fast, so that was good. A problem though, was that my # at work doesn't pop up as my exact number, but a general number for everyone at the office. Its a problem I currently have, of course, but just wondering about that.

 

I signed up a week ago. I think this will be one of the best services around, if they keep adding features intelligently. The web interface is great. Still, I'm just in the "testing" stage now. It looks like it will have a free and pay-for-premium features aspect to it.

My sister lives in Austin, my mother in Houston. I set up an Austin area code number to forward to my mother's Houston area code number, and now my sister can call my mother for free.

The call handling features are also great. Ringing all my cell phones and landlines at once is nice, I can just pick up whichever phone I want, and my friends and family don't have to hunt for me. I can block and call screen anyone. I can even hide my cellphone number and send my GrandCentral number in the caller ID by using the Click-to-Call feature.

Also, I can keep copies of all voice mails or call recordings. It looks like it will even send a text message notification if you prefer.

All in all, I see voice-over-IP services like this really taking off. They offer many more features than regular telephone service, and are generally much cheaper, especially for long distance and international calls.

 

Dumb question...can people still call the actual nuber for your phone? In other words, do I have to give out the new number? If not and a person calls, say, my actual cell phone number, does the service still work?

 

Damn, they don't have my state listed yet.

 

I get that. But if the person calls the original number on my cell, will my home phone ring if I have that one set up, too?

 

I don't think that will work.

I think at some point GrandCentral will offer the possibility of porting your number to them, so eventually you could port your cell phone number as your GrandCentral number and use their service.

 

Seamlessly switch phones in a convo? Yeah, Vonage does that. And...

I can already do all of these with Vonage. (Plus I can set it up to either forward calls to my cellphone or simultaneously ring up to four numbers at once.) Besides, click-to-call is still less convenient than my trusty ol' cellphone.

OK, that's nice. Although Vonage does allow me to have custom voicemail messages for different times of the day.

Overrated. I had that on my Sprint account once.

I have that feature on my cellphone.

OK...not dismissing the service entirely. But this is just another VoIP company with a decent list of features, really. There's other things Vonage does too, like weather forecasts, repeat dialing (helps you keep trying a busy number for 30 minutes until you get in -- ever tried calling a radio show?), take your phone number with you on the road, and many more I can't even list here. Welcome to yesterday.

Yawn.

 

Err...slight correction. Vonage doesn't have call recording. Nice feature -- but major tinfoil hat issues there too if you're paranoid about that kinda stuff.

 

But what is the point of this service then when I pretty much have all those features already on my existing phone line? It's supposed to be designed for people with old-fashioned phone lines, but you could just switch to Vonage, pay less ($14.99/mo) and still get everything you need.

 

Vonage lacks the call routing features that GrandCentral has. I have the $14.99 Vonage plan and I cannot block anonymous calls, pre-screen calls, or block individual numbers. GrandCentral also offers the simul-ring feature. You can route your friends to all your lines, while routing all your co-workers to voicemail .

How do you switch from a Vonage line to a cell phone seamlessly? I didn't know that was a possibility. How do you block an annoying phone number? I don't have that feature on my plan. As far as I can tell, Vonage customers have been asking for that for years and they haven't made it available.

 

Actually...you're right about the call-blocking. I assumed it was there but it isn't. The switch feature *is* available though. Flash + #90 + Number + #.

I have a little app on my Treo that does all that fancy rule-based stuff. It's called CallFilter -- you can choose what your phone does with any call or text message based on date, time or number -- ignore it, forward to voicemail immediately, use a special ringer, pickup & hangup or even auto-answer. Plus you can make it run a special app based on the contents of a text message. It's neat, but I've actually never used any of the features other than the ringers.