Google Voice Catches Its Big Break with Sprint Integration

Google has made a big step forward for its Voice service with the announcement of a partnership with US carrier Sprint. Its subscribers will now be able to use Google Voice out of the box, while retaining their Sprint phone number. It's the first time Google has partnered with a major carrier and it could prove a big benefit for both players.

"Over time, we've worked to bring an integrated Google Voice experience to your mobile device by building mobile apps, introducing Google Voice Lite, and most recently Number Porting," Jacob Hesch, Software Engineer at Google wrote.

"But we felt that ultimately, the simpler solution would be to partner with carriers to seamlessly integrate Google Voice with your mobile phone. Today, we’d like to share that we’ve teamed up with Sprint to do just that," he announced.

This is the first time that the true potential of Google Voice is being realized. With full integration, Sprint subscribers don't have to worry about any of the regular hassles of getting Voice to work.

Their existing number can be used, Google Voice replaces the Sprint voicemail, there's no need to configure anything and no dedicated app has to be installed, as is the case on any other network.

If users choose to enable Google Voice, any phone linked to their account will ring if they get a call on their Sprint phone number. Likewise, any call they place from any device or from their desktop via Gmail will appear to others as coming from the Sprint number.

Most of the regular benefits of using Google Voice are there, international calls are billed at Google's rates, voicemail messages can be accessed from the web and so on. Only for text messages subscribers have to use the Voice app, otherwise the messages are routed through Sprint.

Google has been slowly working towards making Voice a true alternative to regular services. But fighting against all of the carriers is not easy. It made a big step when it enabled number porting, allowing Voice users to continue to use their existing phone numbers, but the new partnership takes it to a new level.

It's surprising perhaps that a carrier would team up with Google for this. But Sprint is facing some very though times ahead, now that AT&T has announced that it plans to buy T-Mobile, derailing any merger plans between the latter and Sprint.

A 4G version of the Google Nexus S is coming to Spring as well, so it looks like the two companies may be starting to work together more closely in the future.

Not that they had too many options, Google can't really partner with any of the big players, Verizon and AT&T, without severely compromising what it's trying to achieve, and Sprint needs all the help and any advantage it can get at this point.