From what I have been reading from Techcrunch and other sources, Google Voice is shaping up to be a killer app that replicates a lot of existing mobile phone technology such as voice mail, calling, and text messages over the existing 3G connection.  There is not a whole lot new technology-wise hear.  Skype has been doing this for years.  But, the big difference now is that (1) it is from Google, (2) they are giving you a phone number to replace your existing number, and (3) they are attempting to do this on the world’s most popular smart phones—the iphone and the blackberries.  What does this mean?  Long term, I think this might be a first step in turning a lot of these big providers (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, etc.) into dumb 3G/4G pipes.  Meaning that (hypothetically) if WIFI and 3G/4G were reliable enough, you would not even need to pay for phone service or add-ons such as messaging.  You would just pay one rate for data and get all those services via Google (and hopefully other service providers).   Short term, I think we are going to see a lot of fighting from the wireless providers to prevent this from becoming a reality.  They already make a TON of money charging for voice, data, and wireless as separate services.  Although, most rational people realize that these services are, or could be, served over a single data connection in the near future.

Personally, I am all for Google Voice.  It creates competition in an area that has been void of it for years.  It has never made sense to me that year-after-year, voice and texting plans continue to get more expensive.  I think this could be the first step in creating real competition around phone services. What do you think?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 11:54 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.