Free Phone Calls From Google Voice and Gmail Extended Until 2013

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Free calling within the US and Canada through 2012 has also been confirmed on the Official Google Voice blog.

It has been reported that Google Voice and Gmail will continue to offer free calls to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada for all of 2012. Previously, Google had only committed to free calls until the end of 2011.

This should make the owners of the Obi110 VoIP Telephone Adapter very happy, as it allows you plug in any standard telephone system and use Google Voice to make free phone calls. The current regular price is $49.99, for which you will at least get a full year of free phone service including long distance, with no computer required (broadband internet access is required). It costs $20 to port your existing number over to Google Voice. The sound quality is reportedly good per reviews.

I replaced traditional telephone service with VoIP over 6 years ago (except for a brief stint with a cheap DSL plan), and I’m quite happy with the technology. Voice quality is great; I’d much rather talk for extended periods on VoIP rather than cell phone.

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Comments

  1. Just to be clear, it’s not google voice itself that got a reprieve, but calling through gmail (a voip service), which uses your google voice number for caller ID. Normal Google Voice service through their call relay service was still going to be free anyway – it makes money off fees for international calling.

  2. title says 2013. did you mean 2012?

  3. Free until January 1, 2013. Free for all of 2012. 🙂

  4. Woot! I’ve been taking advantage of this this year so nice to see it extended.

  5. Another Eric says

    I’ve used this setup all year, although it tends to disconnect once in a while, which is particularly frustrating when on a business call.

  6. Another Eric,
    Do you have any idea why it disconnects you? I have the same problem, but perhaps worse. I would say about 1 in 10 calls I make or receive get dropped after a random amount of time (3-45 minutes). But for free I’ll be keeping the ObiTalk as long as I can, I just wished I could reduce the number of dropped calls.

  7. My phone line has only gone down once in 12 years. My cable goes out on its own fairly often, and will VOIP work when the power goes out and my modem won’t work?

  8. @Donald – No, if you need that kind of reliability then VoIP isn’t for you. Although, I would contact your cable co if it really goes out that often. I called mine and they did some signal-boosting stuff so that mine never goes out anymore.

  9. anyone know WHAT it will cost?

  10. Is it going to be extended until end of 2013

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