Anyone using Google Voice?

My AT&T contract dies next month and I've about had it with their options, so I'm looking at ways to rearrange my phone service. One way or another, I'll probably be relying on prepaid for my talk time, and I'm thinking GV might help me smooth out any service/transition issues, as well as augmenting my talk time with VOIP at home.

Does anyone have any feedback on GV, tips, stories of how you made the transition, or other unorthodox mobile arrangements?

Right now my fall-back position is Virgin Mobile USA's Beyond Talk plan: overpay for a so-so Android phone (that can be hacked into adequacy) and it's $25/mo for unlimited data + text with 5 hours talk time. Their coverage looks solid for the places I spend 99% of my time, but if I go far afield, I'll hit dead zones. I'll try to talk AT&T into letting me go monthly on data + text and prepaid on talk time with my current phone, but I'm not counting on it.

It's one of our competitors, so I shouldn't say this, but Google Voice is good. I have an account, but only use it for research when building our own products (which are better, but not for consumer markets ;)) The quality is good, and so is the system.

I absolutely love Google Chat. Is that the same thing? It's the only "telephone" I use. The only thing that sucks is not having a phone number where people can actually reach me. So, I have a burner phone for emergencies. It has caller ID so whenever someone calls me on it, I call them back via Google.

*running off to see if there's a difference between Voice and Chat*

**EDIT**
Hmmm... I guess it is different
http://www.google.com/support/forum/...18f1ee45&hl=en
Now I must go research it some more...

Well, apparently VMUSA blocks call forwarding, which breaks a lot of GV functionality, so those two options may be mutually exclusive :/

Ugh. It's very confusing stuff. I researched it for about an hour after my post and I tried setting something up. But I don't have a land line and my burner phone (TracFone) doesn't support the changing of voicemail providers (or whatever it's called). So, I'm SOL.
Oh well, the system I'm using works well enough I guess.

I have two GV numbers.

One points to my sipgate account, google talk, cell phone, work phone. sipsorcery used to call out.
The other just uses google talk. A friend has Asterisk running, which logs in to google talk for me.

I have a Linksys PAP2 device that logs into both accounts for me, and i can make/receive free phone calls.

FWIW, and YMMV, the second option is more reliable, but means giving up google chat from that account (inconvenient to use another account, as voice.google.com wouldn't be as easy to get to).
The first option relies on sipgate stability, which isn't always perfect. Lately, i've been having issues (i can't hear them, phone doesn't pick up, etc.), and i have to reboot the PAP2 or whatever to make it work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by chacham

One points to my sipgate account, google talk, cell phone, work phone. sipsorcery used to call out.
The other just uses google talk. A friend has Asterisk running, which logs in to google talk for me.

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Does that set-up have any impact at all on your cell use? Obviously you'd need unlimited data, and those plans are hard to come by without a pretty ample (certainly for my needs) voice plan attached.

Right now I'm leaning toward one of the Straight Talk phones with a SIM card, which can be transferred to any AT&T phone once activated. I'd still be saving over my current phone bill, considerably with the $30 plan, which would probably be adequate any month I'm not travelling, and I'd be on the same network, which has never been a problem.

I'm hesitant to port everything over to a GV number, mainly because I've seen reports of server lag on calls. The main appeal would be that if I don't stick with my first choice of new carrier, or there's a service gap at any point (which seems to be a given with prepaid carriers), I know my number doesn't change, people can still contact me, and if need be I can point it to a back-up pay-as-you-go phone.

Basically, I'm less interested in pointing one number at multiple phones concurrently, than hedging my bets against the need to point to multiple phones/carriers serially.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Taosaur

Does that set-up have any impact at all on your cell use?

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Yeah, i hardly use it now. :)

Basically, if i'm home, i pick up on PAP2 phone, if i'm at the office, i pick up there. Otherwise, i just use my cell phone. In a sense, that's what it is for, when i'm not near another phone.