Google recently acquired a company called GrandCentral, which I was preparing to do a review of anyway after testing the service out a bit. This only makes the offering all that much stronger, and in my opinion it’s something everyone should try out.

Here is the Google acquisition announcement which took about 2 seconds to download directly from my voice mail:

GrandCentral links all of your phone numbers together and layers on a TON of new features. How? They are giving people One Number…for Life - a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location - but tied to you. This number will consolidate your voice messaging, route calls to wherever you are, and even allow you to screen your calls.
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For those of you that read my previous Guide to Free Internet Phone Calls or my horrible issues with Packet8 service, you’ll recall that I have long been a supporter of ATT CallVantage service.

Well, I was upset to learn today that AT&T has quietly lowered the monthly rates on their CallVantage service without notifying existing customers of this fact - or adjusting their billing!
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It’s amazing how much communication costs. If I add up my cellular bills, Internet bills and home phone service we’re looking at $250 a month! $3,000 a year is more than the average income of a family in 90% of the countries on earth. That is simply criminal!

Luckily, ever since the advent of the Internet those costs have been plummeting, and I would expect them to continue dropping until it costs almost nothing to talk to anyone, anywhere. (When wi-fi Internet has the same coverage as cellular networks all calls will be free!) For now, however, I’ve put together this handy little guide to help decrease the various costs associate with making phone calls.
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First of all, I’d like to apologize to anyone whom I ever mentioned Packet 8 to in the past. Here’s why…

After being an ATT CallVantage subscriber for over 2 years and finding the service to be reliable, high quality and feature-rich I decided to switch to Packet 8 because the service appeared to be similarly featured and $10 per month less expensive. I had also told several people that I thought it was a good deal and that they should try it, so I was taking my own advice.

In all fairness to me, I also based this decision on the fact that call quality via services such as Skype, Yahoo IM and other VoIP offerings have improved so dramatically in the past few years. The logic was that any large VoIP carrier would probably offer similar call quality, so Packet 8 seemed like a relatively good deal ($20 per month vs. $30 with ATT).

I couldn’t have been more wrong…
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