To get Google Voice you have to be in the US and request an invitation:
- For most people, you have to fill out this form, then wait (usually several days).
- If you’re in the military, you get an invite in a day or two.
Military invites also get priority processing, usually within a business day. You have to have a .mil e-mail address and be in the US when you apply, or ask a friend or family member back home to do it for you using your e-mail address.
For non-military people, waiting times vary and can be several days. If the launch of Google Voice follows the same approach as the launch of Gmail, the next step will be issuing invitations to existing Google Voice users to send on to their friends.
If you get an invite, use it right away or pass it on quickly, as they expire – perhaps as son as in a few days.
This slow approach might seem limiting in terms of Google Voice’s uptake, but Gmail has 50 million users and growing fast, so it seems like a model that works.
Google Voice only works in the US, for US phone numbers, and you can only sign up for it while in the US. As soon as you go out of the country, Google Voice continues to work online and via e-mail, and on the phones you leave behind, but it won’t ring cell phone(s) you have with you.
The reason for the sole focus on the US is two-fold: 1) Google is focusing on one country at a time to keep the quality of service high and 2) different countries have different charging rules for who pays for calls and SMS text messages. The rules in the US happen to be friendlier to Google Voice, allowing it to be offered as a free service, than the rules in most other countries.
Given this latter factor, rollout to other countries may be very slow indeed. Also, Google Voice may work quite differently in most other countries, if and when it’s rolled out to them, than it does for Americans; in particular, it may cost money, or may only work with different phone plans than we’re used to.
