Google has started a free, new service that allows you to route incoming calls to one or more of your phones, home, cell, or work. This is great if you have friends, relatives, or customers who are trying to track you down.
For example, my wife's sisters often will call us at home when we are at the cabin, or vice versa, but not both. However, if they call our Google Voice number, both phones might ring and we would answer the one we were at.
We also get caller ID if the caller is on our Google Voice contact list. We also get call blocking in that we can choose to accept or not accept a call.
My daughter thought this would be great for her use because she switches among a company phone, her home office phone, and her cell phone. By letting customers and employees know her Google Voice number, they would be able to reach her with a single call.
For more information see https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite/. There is a button for more information on Google Voice at the bottom of the invitation page.
Google Voice also provides within the U.S. and Canada free long-distance. Outside this area they provide very low cost service. For example, most of Europe is two cents per minute, and Japan is three cents per minute. For some countries, it can cost more to call a cell phone. For a complete list of rates, see http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?answer=141925
For long distance, you can either do it from one of your registered phones or online. If you place the call from one of your registered phones, you enter your four-digit PIN, select place a call from the voice menu, and then dial the number. This is not much different from using a call service like CogniDial.
If you do it online, you can call or send SMS from your contact list, or you can enter any number in a sidebar. I think then your phone will ring for the call. Skype has an advantage here in that you can use your computer for the call without extra equipment.
Speaking of Skype, it already provides free world-wide video calls; the drawback is that both parties must have a Skype account. Oh, yes, both parties must also have a web-cam for a video call.
The cost and ease of world-wide communications has been improving dramatically and will probably improve even faster over the next decade. I remember when it as a long-distance call for a few miles away, from a couple of miles to about 25 miles, depending on where you lived in a calling area. To make a long-distance call you had to go through an operator. In some countries, you had to request your call in advance and be ready hours later for the call to be completed.
First came direct-dial calls all across a country, then direct-dial across national borders, and then across oceans. It was a big thing when long-distance was a dollar-a-minute anywhere in the U.S., and then it dropped to twenty-five cents a minute. I don't know what local telephone companies charge now. I do know you can get single-charge long-distance with some providers, either for a set number of minutes per month or unlimited number of minutes.
I wouldn't be surprised if in ten years one could call anywhere in the world for free, the only cost being a fixed cost for telephone or internet access.
