Home phone News

Google Call Phone lets you make calls from your email

Thursday 26 August, 2010

By Garnet Roach - garnet@consumerchoices.co.uk

Google Gmail users in the US can now make phone calls directly from their email.

The new Call Phone feature, which Google hopes to roll out to more countries soon, will US users to make calls to phones around the world from their computers.

“Calls to the US and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates,” said Google. “We worked hard to make these rates really cheap with calls to the UK, France, Germany, China, Japan - and many more countries - for as little as 2 cents per minute.”

The new service undercuts internet phone giant Skype, which charges up to 2.1 cents per minute for landline calls to the US.

Both Skype and Google have already been offering free computer-to-computer calling for a number of years.

Users will also be able to get a free phone number from Google, allowing them to receive calls on their PC. The Google Voice service can also field calls to users’ home, mobile or office numbers.

Simon Piper, business development manager at Homephonechoices.co.uk, said: “If you want to make cheap calls over the internet but can’t wait for Google Call Phone to launch in the UK, you should check out VoIP provider Vonage (www.vonage.co.uk), which offers low international call rates and packages - and even lets you use a traditional home phone.”