Summary
PC magazine did their typical in-depth review of Google Voice and found it to be very good. The only thing missing they said is consistent call quality. And as others have pointed out before it will be hard for Google to control this quality, or will it?
Analysis
Google voice has a lot of interesting features, it has very cheap international rates and even PC magazine's reviewer calls it very good. The only thing missing they said is consistent call quality. Google voice uses the Internet to connect your calls. And of course naturally people are assuming that because Google doesn't control the Internet that they can not control the call quality. But is that really true?
Google has been buying up a lot of dark fiber in the past years (Dark fiber is fiber that is not in use, since it doesn't carry light when not in use it is called dark). So maybe this is what Google plans to do with all this Internet capacity: built a so-called overlay network run Google voice over it and then they can control the voice quality and thus create a very serious competitor for the classic carriers such as AT&T, Sprint and Verizon.
Hans van Rietschote consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
