Thanks to a formatting error in a .pdf’d filing with the FCC, BusinessWeek reporter Arik Hesseldahl was able to include subscriber data for Google Voice in this article. Thus it was revealed that the phone and voice messaging management service has over 1.4 million registered users, 570,000 of them using it seven days a week.

Putting things in perspective, so-called “incumbent” carriers serve hundreds of millions of subscribers, often across multiple “plays” (IP, fixed-line voice and wireless). But Google Voice has followed more of an “invitation-only” protocol when rolling out the service that has constrained the unbridled growth that competing phone companies seem to fear.

Yet the Google filing uncloaks some of the fascinating arcana of IP-telephony. There’s no question that Google will inevitably become a dominant player in the VoIP and call-management business. But as the list in the final paragraph of the BusinessWeek article reveals, Google is also creating new business for the largest of the IP-based voice carriers – the so-called “peers”, as well as some of the also-rans. Going back a few years, Google raised global suspicion as it contracted to use as much “dark fiber” as it could. Likewise, as an active lobbyist for opening up wireless “white spaces” for telephony apps, it is easy to picture Google as an innovative “first-among-peers” with the ability to leverage the billions (not 1.4 million) users of a broad range of real-time and near-real-time services.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Recombinant Telephony, IP telephony, Google Voice