GoogleVoice has 1.4M users; reveals partner companies

Whoops! According to BusinessWeek, Google accidentally revealed its user numbers in filings to U.S. regulators. Although later redacted from the documents, BusinessWeek was quick on the draw and managed to get ahold of the originals before the 'less informative' documents replaced those originally made available to the public.

According to the letter to regulators, GoogleVoice has 1.4 million users of its single web-based phone number and voicemail service. The service is used regularly by about half that figure. Prior to being acquired by Google, the service originally called GrandCentral had 'tens of thousands' of users. As these numbers grow, the service could become quite disruptive, at least in the consumer VoIP arena where users aren't as worried about security or QOS.

Another interesting tidbit from the Google letter was the list of various companies who make GoogleVoice happen. Level 3 Communications, Global Crossing, Broadvox Communications, Bandwidth.com, and Pac-West Telecomm are all involved. iBasis, an international voice carrier and wholesale provider, helps connect outbound international calls, while porting and carrier lookup services are provided by Neustar, a directory services provider.

Last week, Google revealed that it was no longer blocking huge swaths of numbers by denying access to certain telephone prefixes [1]. GoogleVoice now uses a workaround by blocking only about 100 specific phone numbers on its much-anticipated Google Voice.

For more:
- read this article [2]

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