June 22, 2009

Google last month reserved 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may finally be ready to roll out its long-anticipated Google Voice service.

The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones.

Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned. Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google is close to adding a significant amount of users.

A Google spokesperson would only say "as a matter of policy, we typically do not comment on contracts with third-party technology suppliers."

A public launch has been anticipated since Google said in March the service would be "open to new users soon." There has been speculation that the service would begin today – June 18 – but Google has yet to make an announcement.

I've only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it's completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate, just in general," said Kevin Dando, director of digital and education communications for PBS. "When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.

Google Voice has a number of unique features including call transfer between a user's devices, multi-party conferencing, conversion of voice calls to text messages, cut-rate international calling, and call transcription.