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DELL VOICE launches for us Canadians!

So, I’ve been waiting for Google Voice to come to Canada for some time. Free long distance, one number… yadda yadda yadda…

So far, nothing.

But, yesterday a new program has come out which can come close… potentially.

DELL VOICE

A service Dell has married with Fongo to deliver.

If you live in an ascribed city you can get a local number. (not so cool for me, but with free long distance ‘out’, not a big deal).

If you the number you want to call is one of their list then there is no long distance to call it. Not bad. If it’s not, you can buy credits (which are pretty reasonable for long distance, i.e. US or a non-listed Canadian city is 2¢/minute). If you’re dialing a number, they have a button you can press to tell you how much it will be per minute. Still not bad considering all the ‘free’ you’re getting (caller id, unlimited incoming, call waiting, etc…), just have to use some data.

Want to see the city listings? Pretty extensive (but no Thunder Bay… but no worries, my long distances are always ‘out’, so most of the people I’d call are in the list).

So I signed up, got myself a Toronto number and have yet to really give it a try out. I’m curious how much data a voice call would use.

I’m also curious about using it in the states. Often some of my long distance is done by being IN the US to call others. As long as I’m ‘online’ I think only the destination should matter right?

Now, the only issue I have with it is that it ‘constantly sits in your notification area all the time. Which makes sense, but for me, I wouldn’t be using it often, so I have to do a manual exit.

You can buy the unlock SIP info for $50 and then put that into your phone settings, but I’m not ready to put that in quite yet (it’s only a day old, let’s see how it matures first).

Is it a Google Voice killer? Well, without GV for reals, I can’t tell you, but you get a lot of the features with the exception of the transcribed voicemails. This will tide us over until Google can get us GV!

So what are you waiting for… many of our readers are in some of the ‘good cities’ to take advantage of this ‘free’ offer. Go download it on your phone and you can register for an account right from the app.