The concept behind Google Voice is simple: You’re given one phone number that can be configured to ring in multiple places — office, home, on your cell phone or even on an account on the VoIP service Gizmo5. We’ve looked at a number of virtual phone systems, including 3jam and Grasshopper, and while they have many nice features, it’s hard to beat Google Voice’s price — free except for international calls.

Have you received your Google Voice invitation?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities

3jam is billing itself as an alternative to Google Voice, and it’s available today, so I’ve given it a quick spin. This is not a complete review, as there are some of 3jam’s features that I haven’t tried, such as SMS messaging, forwarding to Skype, an API that lets you write your own applications to interact with their service, and “group” numbers that allow multiple users to share voice mail and messaging.

Signing Up and Getting a Number

Signing up for the service is easy. Just select an area code where you want a number and 3jam will display a series of available numbers from which you can pick. You can also enter words to see if you can get a “vanity number” that spells something. You can also port an existing number to the 3jam service for a onetime fee of $25, something that Google Voice doesn’t yet offer. Right now, 3jam is only offering incoming numbers in the continental U.S. If you want an incoming number in another country, you’ll need SkypeIn or another VoIP service.

Pricing

In my opinion, a major weakness of 3jam’s service is its complex pricing structure. For those of us who are used to the clearly-defined packages offered by most cell phone and VoIP providers, it’s bewildering to be confronted with a choice of monthly fees and SMS packages, and to realize that the monthly fees include only a ridiculously small number of incoming minutes (just 30!) and no outgoing minutes at all.

3jam charges a monthly fee ranging from $4.99 per month for a 12-month contract, to $8.99 per month on a monthly basis. Additional minutes, SMS and even transcriptions of voice mails (over the first 30) cost extra. Additional minute rates for calls (apparently both incoming and outgoing) are competitive. The SMS prices are puzzling, though: 5 cents per message to the U.S., but only 4 cents to Uganda or Uzbekistan?

Annoyingly, information about pricing is very difficult to find on 3jam’s web site. The monthly fees are displayed during the sign-up process, but only after you’ve already selected a phone number. A more comprehensive list of pricing seems to be available only in the help section, which I found by doing a search.

By comparison, the Google Voice service does not currently charge a monthly fee, or fees for calls and SMS messages in the U.S. Google Voice charges for international calls at rates that are competitive with other VoIP services. It’s rumored that Google could make the service advertising-supported at some point.

While some people may find 3jam’s à la carte approach to pricing advantageous, I think that businesses will need to know what they can expect to pay; 3jam makes that difficult. The 3jam control panel does offer a running total of calls made and the costs incurred, so users can at least keep track of what they’ve spent.

Setup

Setting up the service is straightforward. You can set incoming calls to the 3jam number to ring on as many as six different phones, not only in the U.S., but in many other locations throughout the world. You can also forward incoming calls to Skype, something that Google Voice doesn’t offer. And you can forward incoming SMS messages to IM services like Google Talk and AIM, which is a nice touch.

3jam offers the ability to import your contacts to its address book from external email accounts like Gmail, and from Outlook, Thunderbird Entourage and .csv files. I was unable to get either Gmail or a .csv import to work, however, and didn’t try the other options.

Quality

Like many VoIP services, sound quality varies from call to call. I had several friends place test calls to me, and we heard occasional echoes, delays and crackles. But generally, call clarity was good — as good as Google Voice, if not better. The transcriptions of voice mails seem to be on a par with Google Voice as well, which is to say, good enough to get the gist of the message, even when some words are missing or incorrect.

Applications

3jam offers three applications that I didn’t try because I’m on a Mac. The first is a Windows-only desktop application for SMS messaging. (The site mentions a web version, but the link to it doesn’t seem to be working.) There is also a BlackBerry app, and a way of having 3jam send messages to you via Twitter.

For people who need maximum flexibility in routing calls and SMS messages, especially internationally, 3jam is likely to be an excellent choice. For those who need to forecast their communication costs, and those who don’t need the international forwarding options, Google Voice is probably a better choice, once it becomes more widely available.

Have you tried 3jam? How does it compare to Google Voice?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities
• Could Skype in Your Pocket Beat the iPod Touch?

Google Voice

Google Voice germinated after Google acquired GrandCentral almost two years ago. The service was relaunched earlier this year as a private beta for GrandCentral users. I’ve been using it for a while, and am generally impressed. Google Voice offers a number of features that should make it popular with web workers.

Incoming Calls and SMS

• You are given one phone number that can be configured to ring multiple places — office, home, cell phone or even an account on the VoIP service Gizmo5. (In the past, users were assigned a new telephone number. Apparently, it will soon be possible to port existing numbers to Google Voice.) Sound quality is quite good, although there can be a delay in transmission, which causes awkward pauses. It’s rather like a better version of talking via satellite.
• If you are not available, voicemails are recorded. They can be transcribed and sent to you by email or SMS. The accuracy of the transcriptions varies, but ranges from fair to excellent.

• You can choose to screen some or all callers, and have them speak their name before the call is forwarded to you. You can set up groups, and allow some callers to bypass screening.
• You can “listen in” on callers as they leave messages, or record calls.
• You can import your contacts through CSV files.

Outgoing Calls and SMS

• You can make outgoing calls through the Google Voice web site. Outgoing calls are free in the continental U.S. International calling rates are quite reasonable, and are competitive with many VoIP services.
• With the Google Voice Add-on for Firefox, you don’t even need to go to the Google Voice web site to make calls. You can just click the add-on and enter a number. And the add-on recognizes phone numbers on web pages and makes them clickable links, too.
• You can also send SMS messages through the Google Voice web site and the Firefox add-on. When you do so, you are assigned a number in area code 406 that allows recipients to reply.

There are a number of other useful features, including conference calling. The complete list is at Google Voice help.

Are you already using Google Voice? Will you sign up once it becomes available?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities
• Could Skype in Your Pocket Beat the iPod Touch?

Om has details about the back-from-the-sleeping service over on GigaOM.

In addition to opening the service up to new users, Om reports that Google Voice will host a suite of new VoIP features:

1. You can use your GrandCentral number to send and receive SMS messages, and have them forwarded to your current wireless phone. You can send messages from the mobile or from the landline phone.
2. Make phone calls using the web or your mobile/landline phone.
3. You can get transcripts for voicemails left on Google Voice. These transcripts, based on internal Google technology currently being used by GOOG-411 service, can be sent to you via SMS.
4. Create conference calls by dragging phone numbers onto existing calls. This will be useful for small businesses and web workers.
5. Free calls to all U.S. numbers. You can make international calls but that will cost you, depending on the country you are dialing.

Google Voice will also integrate with Google contacts, which will be a very welcome change.

None of these new features are groundbreaking. There are a number of startups that can do what Google Voice does and more. But with Google Voice we can likely expect a simple, straightforward interface and low barrier to entry, with only a Google Account required to sign up.

We’ll have a more in-depth look at Google Voice once it’s widely available.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities
• Could Skype in Your Pocket Beat the iPod Touch?

This morning, those of us still using a GrandCentral number are logging in to our accounts to see this:

An expired SSL certificate is not a big deal. Just accept the expired certificate because you trust the site and move on. But that’s not the point. It’s yet more evidence that if the GrandCentral folks are still at Google, they’re working on something else. The GrandCentral support forum is filled with questions and problems, and there has been no official answer to anything.

The challenge for those of us left behind is number portability, or lack thereof. I like my GrandCentral number. It’s easy to remember. It’s in the area code I want it to be. I would gladly use another reasonably-priced service if I could take the number with me (I do use PhoneFusion for my local contacts). Yes, GrandCentral has always been “beta” and was never meant to be used for mission-critical contacts. But it’s a little difficult to “test” a service like GrandCentral without giving the number out to contacts, isn’t it?

It’s about time for Google to do the right thing. Shut GrandCentral down once and for all, and give us a way to port our numbers elsewhere.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce
• Content Farms: The Players, The Benefits, The Risks

Additionally, there are those who embrace the utility of a soft phone.  A soft phone is an application that runs on your computer and allows you to send or receive phone calls, normally through a microphone headset.  Skype is probably the most well known soft phone, but a competitor of theirs called Gizmo5 (formerly known as Gizmo Project) can be combined with GrandCentral to give you soft phone capabilities.

This Gizmo/GrandCentral combination is made possible because of the two services’ use of SIP, a standard protocol for VoIP communication.  Using Gizmo and GrandCentral together will give you absolutely free calling inbound and outbound to your callers, absent of using any cell minutes or using a landline.

Follow this hands-on guide to enable Gizmo5 to be added as a phone in your GrandCentral set up.

First and foremost, you must have a GrandCentral account set up and ready.  Secondly, download Gizmo5 from their website and create an account. Gizmo5 is available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and Nokia Internet tablets.

Now that you have your two accounts on GrandCentral and Gizmo5 set up, it’s time to integrate them.  Log in to your GrandCentral account and click on the “Settings” tab.  In the Phones group, you can see where you have your various phones that GrandCentral forwards your calls to, according to your preferences.  It is here that we will put in our Gizmo5 ‘phone number’ for GrandCentral to use.

To find that Gizmo5 phone number, launch Gizmo 5 and under the Account menu, click on “My Profile”.  In this window, shown on the right, you’ll see your SIP phone number.  Write down this number, minus the 1 at the beginning and excluding everything after the @ sign.

Now, go back to GrandCentral and click “Add/Edit Number”.  In the dropdown, choose Gizmo, type in the SIP number found in Gizmo5, and assign a name of your choosing to the entry.  Lastly, click “Save” to commit the change.

Now, whenever you have Gizmo5 running on your computer, you have the ability to recieve phone calls without using your cell minutes or tying up a landline.  All voice packets are carried over the Internet from GrandCentral to wherever your logged into Gizmo5 from.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Google’s Voice Possibilities
• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era

This event should encourage all those of us who work on the web to build redundancy into your web-centric work life.  It’s no secret that our internet and web infrastructures are vulnerable to many threats whether they be man-made or occurrences of nature.  Taking simple measures can help ensure you stay productive and in contact should some part of your work infrastructure go down.

For enterprises, allowing people to work from alternate locations (including home) is conducive to disaster recovery.  In the case of this GrandCentral outage, users of this service should simply give all important contacts an alternate number to reach them in case of GrandCentral being unavailable.

Regarding the GrandCentral outage, I don’t understand what all the disappointment and agony was about regarding this otherwise very useful web service.  First of all, this “outage” was on a Sunday morning for a few hours.  Secondly, GrandCentral is a free service that gives its users unmatched value every day.  Finally, this is a beta service and if you print your GrandCentral number on your business cards and use it as the lifeline of your business, you should have been forewarned that hiccups in the service will occur.  Granted, GrandCentral was acquired by Google and therefore people have an expectation of uptime and reliability, but please don’t forget this is a ‘beta’ service and just like Gmail or Google Documents, outages can occur.

My suggestion: reflect on your daily working life and see where you can build in a back-up plan.  Whether it’s storing your information in an offsite backup service or having an alternate way of getting online should your DSL go out, your business will likely depend on your ability to recover from future unknown outages.

(photo credit: Flickr User edkohler)

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Why iPad 2 Will Lead Consumers Into the Post-PC Era
• The Near-Term Evolution of Social Commerce