Google Quietly Adds VoIP Calling Functionality To Google Voice

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While the new features coming into Google Voice may have been arriving slower than many have hoped for, especially given acquisitions of products such as Gizmo5, it looks like a secret feature has recently been discovered. Or maybe more accurately, not a secret feature, but simply a feature that has yet to be announced.

And for some this will be very good news, especially considering this is a feature that many have wanted to for some time. And on top of that, many expected Google to include this after they purchased Gizmo5. Of course, Google has recently announced the shut down of that service. But that is a story for another today.

Today we are talking VoIP calling with Google Voice. That said, this is far from an official feature at this point. In fact, it has only been discovered by the crew over at Disruptive Telephony who are reporting that;

“you could simply take your Google Voice number and append “@sip.voice.google.com” to get a perfectly working SIP URI that you could use with any SIP phone.”

But with the exciting news comes some disappointing news. In this case, the disappointing news is that this is apparently not working for every Google Voice user. Given that, if you have been hoping to make VoIP calls with your Google Voice number you may want to give this a shot.

As to being useful, well for some this will be more welcomed. Me personally, I use few minutes as it is and often find the connection I get from Google Voice in my Gmail inbox to be sufficient enough. But for those looking to take this on the go and make calls, think something along the lines of and Android smartphone running the Sipdroid application.

Bottom line, this is early and things will likely change, but if nothing else it is a promising sign that Google is preparing VoIP calling for Google Voice users.