Over at SearchEngineLand, Greg Sterling is reporting that Google is giving some of its visitors the ability to make their existing wireless numbers into the “single number” for their Google Voice accounts.

Here’s the blog post regarding the offer, which also includes this video:

The impact on the IP-telephony landscape will be negligible and subtle. The “portability” service is being offered on a limited basis. It applies only to wireless numbers (not, for instance, a business’s landline). What’s more It carries a charge of $20 for each ported number and requires the wireless subscriber to “cancel” his or her existing contract (which often involves an “Early Termination Fee” in the $150 range).

I’ve been urging folks to petition for number portability since June 2009. My thought was that it would create a new use case for mobile business people to consolidate their communications needs around a single phone number. But I didn’t think this would be the response. It is not destined to attract a lot of new users because it makes it too complicated and expensive to switch.

Meanwhile, Google is taking an approach to telephony that should marginalize telephone numbers, especially for owners of smart phones. Its developers have done a great job of embedding Google Voice-based talk paths into a number of its popular online properties – especially GMail and the Google app for mobile (including Rim, iOS and Android). Thus they make it possible for mobile subscribers to personalize their Google Voice experience and make it a preferred way to communicate from desktops and smartphones.

As I described back in 2009, Google took pains to claim an inventory of phone numbers, but it makes them largely transparent to the user. These days, users commonly originate calls by clicking on a entry in their contact lists or simply returning a missed or “recent” call. Likewise, the “Call Phone” feature of Gmail leverages the contact list embedded in its popular email service, but it’s introduction did not siphon traffic from alternative IP-telephony services, like Skype.

The impact of BYON (Bring Your Own Number) will be minimal to begin with and will have a “time release” quality to it as people hold off until their wireless contracts have expired. It will appeal to a small subset of individuals who have grown attached to their existing wireless numbers and want to make it their single-number-for-life while availing themselves of Google Voice’s many cool features, which include voicemail transcription in a single “in-box” (with text messages), PC-based text origination, inexpensive long distance and international calling from PCs and mobile phones. In the long run, it will be the list of features, not the ability to port an existing number, that will attract new users.

Categories: Articles

Tags: IP telephony, Google Voice, number portability, Mobile Apps