Problems using Google Voice Mobile

Google Voice Mobile is a welcome addition.  It gives you many of the capabilities of GVDialer for free.  You can place outgoing calls from your Blackberry using your Google Voice number receive and send SMS messages and listen/read voicemail.

Some people are having trouble placing outbound calls. Most of these issues are caused because people don’t understand what the application is trying to do. When you place an outbound call using Google Voice Mobile the application tells your phone to dial a special access number. For most people that number is 347-234-5001. This number rings into a computer at Google. When the computer answers it looks at the caller ID information to determine who you are. It then turns around and dials out to connect you to the number you typed in the Blackberry application.

Obviously if your phone does not send caller ID information to Google’s computer it doesn’t know who you are and it simply hangs up. So if you have some type of privacy setting turned on to block your caller ID the application won’t work. The GVDialer application doesn’t run into this problem because it dials directly into your Google voice number, selects a few menu options and then dials the number you wish to connect to.

Another problem occurs if your mobile number is associated with more than one Google Voice account. If that is the case Google’s computer reads the incoming caller ID and can’t figure out which Google voice account you are associated with. Instead of giving a meaningful error it simply hangs up on you.

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