“How to save $20 on your phone bill” or “Why GoogleVoice rocks”

Here is some tech info to balance out all that fashion blogging going on. ;-)

We all know carriers charging $20 for unlimited texting is simply ludicrous. An article from the NYT in 2008 provides an argument for this from a financial standpoint, aka it costs nothing for the carriers to provide the texting service. (1)

From a simple numbers standpoint on existing ATT data plans (because that’s to whom I’ve signed away my cellular soul), we are being overcharged to the tune of about 6.5 million percent. The baseline data plan rate is $35 dollars for 2GB of data usage. This means that it costs 1.6298e-8 dollars/byte. A typical text message is about 190 bytes give or take. This means that one text message should cost 3.097e-6 dollars or 3.097e-4 cents. Instead, they charge 20 cents per text message if you don’t have the unlimited plan. That’s a markup of 3 orders of magnitude. Or in other words, to get your money’s worth of texts for $20, you would have to send about 6.5 million texts per month. (The current record is about 35000.)

Ok, so how do you avoid being ripped off? You just wouldn’t be in with the times if you got rid of texting all together! What’s the solution? GoogleVoice.

GoogleVoice is a free service that gives you a brand new phone number that people can call or text. One caveat of this service is that it does not yet support MMS or picture/video messaging. (More on how to get around this later.) The sole reason I switched to a GV number is because it allowed me to not have to pay $20 a month for an overpriced text messaging plan and still have one number for both calling and texting.

The hardest part of employing the use of my GV number was getting people “trained” on my new number. I basically kept the minimum text messaging plan for a month or two while I responded to texts from my GV number rather than my actual cell phone number. After two months, I dropped the plan completely.

From an iPhone, there are 3 apps that provide a stock-like interface for your GV account:

1) The one released by Google is simply called “Google Voice”. The only feature I like about this app is that it shows any address book pictures you might have next to the messages from that person. Other than that, the app tends to be slow and the interface a bit non-intuitive. Built in push notifications. (Free)

2) The next is “GV Connect”. This is my favorite of the three simply because of the user interface as the tabbed layout is very easy to navigate. In addition, I’ve contacted the developer of this app with random feedback/questions and he’s responded almost instantly; excellent customer service. Push notifications via Boxcar.($2.99)

3) The last is “GV Mobile +”. This app, after a recent much needed update, is my second favorite. Some clever features in this app included pseudo MMS via upload to google (sending a link to the picture in the SMS) and built in push notifications (no need for Boxcar). You can also send a text to multiple recipients although this feature is coming to GVC in the future.  The interface uses a pop up menu rather than tabs for navigation. Also, communication with the developer is through a forum interface and answers/updates tend to be long overdue. ($2.99)

Android also has GV built right in and while I have not personally used it much, the experience is very similar.

All of these apps are not a VoIP solution to calling and they DO use cell minutes. Other apps exist to provide that functionality if it is wanted/needed.

So if you have a smartphone and if you want to save $20 a month on texting, get your free GV number and download one the above apps today!

Written by guest blogger: baudencm

(1) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/business/28digi.html?_r=3&partner=rss&emc=rss