Google Voice Integrated Into Sprint Service | Hacker News Reader

Google Voice Integrated Into Sprint Service

techcrunch.com

40 pointsacconrad16 comments

With the news that AT&T is buying T-Mobile, does Sprint move to position itself as a "cool, customer-oriented" mobile service?

Brilliant maneuver by these two companies. As if I needed another reason to wish more carriers carried the iPhone.

I look forward to Google Voice being something people understand as a feature of their service plan rather than some mystery google product that makes calling me more confusing than before.

Google needs to go ahead and buy Sprint.

Why buy them? If you have partnerships then you can sell your product to the entire market. If they buy Sprint then nobody has a reason to go into partnership with them, because they'd be competing with their supplier.

I am a sprint subscriber and had switched my voice mail handling to google voice for a couple of months while using my existing number. I found that it was not as reliable as sprint's visual voice mail, with notifications sometimes coming in hours after the call. Also though gv rates for international dialing are great the quality of the connection is lacking compared to using sprint's long distance service.

Well I'm shocked. It's not often that I (as a Sprint user) get a cool new ability before people on other networks.

Google Voice Blog post: http://googlevoiceblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/sprint-integrate...

Sprint landing page - www.sprint.com/googlevoice

Interesting. I have a Google voice number and a Sprint account but there is a question I don't see an answer to, although I haven't dug around in the fine print yet.

If I switch my Sprint number to Google voice, are mobile to mobile calls still in the unlimited mobile to mobile pool, or do they go into the anytime pool(in my case 1500 shared between myself, wife and daughter)? With a nearly teenage daughter I'd rather keep most of our calls in the unlimited mobile to mobile pool!

I worked on the Sprint side of this a bit, had the same question early on and the answer I got was that it didn't change minutes of usage calculations...so...nNo change to how numbers behave from a billing perspective. If you're calling a mobile number and have AMA, it goes in that bottomless bucket. If you're calling a landline, it uses Anytime minutes. Same story for shared lines-- no change to how minutes are used.

Thanks for the info! So if someone calls my current Google voice number which gets forwarded to my Sprint number it would not be AMA, but if I switch my Sprint number to Google Voice control and they call that it is still AMA, yes?

Sounds like a winner!

yep, that's my understanding. If you actually sign up for GV as your Sprint number, it acts just like your Sprint number. No forwarding involved.

Also, you get to keep your GV number for..I believe 6 months is the plan. It behaves the same way as your Sprint number during that time. That's my understanding right now anyway.

Wow. Just when I was thinking about looking for greener pastures, Sprint does something seemingly user-friendly for once.

Same. I was pumped about Verizon LTE until I saw the insane caps they're putting on usage. This plus Nexus S 4G + unlimited means I'll probably make the switch when my contract is up.

This plus the 4G Nexus S is going to make it really hard to hang onto my old T-Mobile/Nexus One combo. No equivalent of my T-Mobile no-contract post-paid service, though.

This is an interesting move, of course -- most of the carriers seem to hate the un-monitorable things, like Google Voice, that we like so much.

Conversely, there's an interesting opportunity for Sprint here to catch all the AT&T haters that will be leaving T-Mobile as they get acquired. I personally haven't had much luck with either AT&T or Sprint in the DC area, so I guess I'm Verizon-bound, but there is, perhaps, an opportunity for someone to catch some chum.

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