REVIEW:GOOGLE VOICE

Google gives away a lot of good stuff for free.

Google voice, that is a service that gives you one phone number that connects to all of your phones. It also manages your voice and text messages and gives you a way to make cheap or free international calls. It comes as a downloadable application for cell phones and as a Web-based program.

The program has the potential to upend the business of phone calls or at least you might get that impression from the hubbub surrounding it. Apple has held up approving Google Voice for use on the iPhone, and the

Federal Communications Commission jumped in to ask whyA new Google Voice phone number is linked into mobile phone, and was off to the races. For now, you can't use your existing phone number as the one you manage through Google Voice, although allowing such "number portability" is something the company is considering.

Google Voice offers discounted phone calls much like inexpensive phone cards that require you to call a toll-free number and enter codes before you dial someone. The advantage of Google Voice is that you can skip the extra steps of dialing a 1-800 number and a code from the phone card.

After firing up phone's Web browser and going to the Google Voice page, u can enter a number and hit call, or pick someone off your contacts list. Google Voice first calls your phone, then the receiving party's. For those with the Google Voice downloadable app, the phone just calls the party after rerouting through an intermediary link. This allows the recipient to see your Google Voice number appear on his caller ID.

The sound quality was fine but you may notice a delay.On international calls, Google charges rates that are competitive with Skype, which routes calls over the Internet, and with phone cards all of which are way cheaper than just dialing abroad straight from your cell phone. Google even gives new members a 10-cent credit to begin. (You refill your account by paying with a credit card online.)

Google isn't necessarily the cheapest option, though. If you want to call Afghanistan, for example, you're better off using the 2 NayPinoy phone card from PhoneCardSmile.com, which charges 26.3 cents per minute. Google would charge you 29 cents, and Skype 35.5 cents. But only Google and the phone card work for my mobile phone. Skype requires an app that's not compatible with my phone, which runs the Windows Mobile operating system.

Google Voice isn't the first to offer this sort of savings on international calling. Services from Rebtel and Jajah do pretty much the same thing, and have the added advantage of working from phones that aren't Internet-enabled. But Google offers some bells and whistles that make its system somewhat more compelling.

For instance, u can screen the people who call my Google Voice number. If it's someone who isn't in your contact list, he gets asked his name, which is played to u at the top of the call, after which u can send him to voice mail.

Voice mail is automatically transcribed and sent to you by e-mail and text message. The result is good enough to get the gist and the caller's name and number, despite a few garbles. One annoyance is that if the message is fairly long, the top is chopped into three parts and sent via separate texts, using up the message quota on my wireless plan although you can turn off forwarding of the transcripts.

Voice mail playback can be clunky. On Windows Mobile phone, u have to save an audio file to memory, and use Windows Media player to play it back. It comes out of the speaker on the back of my phone instead of the earpiece,may crimping your privacy. If you use the app, you can choose whether to play voice mail from either the earpiece or speaker.

On a PC, voice mail plays fine inside the Google Voice page, even highlighting the transcribed words as they are spoken, sort of like a karaoke machine.Text messaging, even internationally, is free, which I found surprising and useful. Even though u have to fire up the browser and text through it, it saves you about 50 cents each time. Replies are forwarded to my phone's regular messaging system, chopped up if they are too long. Or they appear in full in a Web browser, either on the phone or a PC.