Call Forwarding

Recently I tried out two telecommunication services, both utilizing call forwarding in a smart way. The first one is Grand Central from Google. The second one is YouMail. Let me begin by saying that while I liked many aspects of both the services I ended up not using either of them, for two very different reasons.

The two most popular telecommunication applications from the IN (intelligent network) world are call waiting and caller Id. The common theme had always been, subscribers love it when an application brings more control to them. But the trick is to bring that control in a very simple and intuitive way, a task that is easier said than done. Both GC and YouMail does this successfully.

The Grand Central allows user to create a single 'virtual' phone number and 'map' that to multiple real phone numbers. In addition, you will get ring back tones, personalized voice mail depending on who is calling, ability to switch phone in the middle of a call and a varity of fun features. Since you have a new number seperate from your actual phone number, if you switch your real phone number, you do not have to let everyone know -- just point the GC number to your new phone number. Better yet, you can have multiple GC numbers each pointing to your same phone and use these numbers for different groups of people. Also to be noted that GC works only for inbound calls, i.e. there is no way currently to configure such that when I call my friend I can use my GC number to appear on his caller ID. This is technically possible but Google will have to integrate with network operators.

YouMail on the other hand is kind of reverse of GC. First of all YouMail is just a voicemail service that allows smart features like personalized greetings for each member on your address book or ability to check your voicemail from Web. So unlike GC, you do not get a new phone number but instead of using boring vanila voicemail box provided by your carrier, you use YouMail. This is done by configuring call forwarding so that after a certain number of rings, the call gets forwarded to YouMail. Most mobile operators will allow you to do this by pressing a certain combination of keys so that their switch will add the forwarding rules. If not, almost all of them will let you call their customer tech support line to do this.

Both GC and YouMail are free to end user. Which obvoiusly begs the question of user privacy and how and when someone will make money by giving this away.

Now as I mentioned earlier, I do not use either service any more. The reason I stopped using GC is because I started getting telemarketing calls on the GC number ! I know for sure, because when ever some one calls my GC number, both my mobile and home phone was configured to ring simulataneously. When ever that happens, I am almost certain that some one is calling my GC number. After getting several of these 'spam' calls, I dropped off my numbers from GC. Even after that, every one in a while I get telemarketers call my cell phone, something that never happened in past 10 years.

On the YouMail, I encountered a technical issue. The service was working fine, until I traveled to India on business. My GSM phone was roaming to a local network, and the forwarding rule of YouMail stopped working because of (I think) the international call forwarding failed. If some one called me, they heard "The call is being forwarded to an unrecognized number" error message. Which means they could not reach either me or my voice mail. When I found out about it, I paniced. Because I was still roaming, I could not use the key combination to 're-program' the forwarding rule. I ended up making an expensive call to T-Mobile tech support so that they can take the call forwarding rule out of their switch. After this experience, I did not put back the YouMail service. I suppose one can experiment using 011 or +1 type of forwarding rule to see if this works outside of the US -- I did not play with it any more.