The Copeland Ramblings/

Google Voice + Gizmo5 = Cheaper calls to Guinea

One thing that is VERY important to Debra and I is communication. We believe that with the tools available today there’s no reason we can’t keep in fairly close contact with you all no matter where in the world we are. We’ve been asking questions about what our communication situation will be in Guinea. Internet won’t be readily available, especially at the beginning. We hopefully will eventually be able to get internet set up at home but it will be akin to dial up and very spotty at best. As far as telephones go, we’ll be able to get cell phones once we arrive. Landlines are rare but over the last few years the mobile phone infrastructure has developed quit a bit. This is very common in developing worlds where it is much easier to erect towers than to bury cable. We’ll have a Guinean phone number and will be able to phone home with it.

One of the major cell companies in Guinea is called Areeba. According to the rates on their webpage, calling home won’t be too cheap, about $0.44 per minute depending on the value of the Guinean franc on any given day. With internet being limited I tried to find a way that we can talk to friends and family at home at a better price.

I ended up piecing together Google Voice and Gizmo5 to make something quite useful. If you haven’t heard of Google Voice, it is a free service where you receive a US phone number that will forward to any other US number or numbers allowing you to just have one phone number through the years. Google voice won’t forward to international (and definitely not Guinean) numbers and so the next step is Gizmo5. Gizmo5 is a competitor to Skype though a bit cheaper. Google voice will forward to Gizmo5 for free which will then forward to us in Guinea. To make a long story short, when someone calls us on our Californian phone number (805.504.8753) it is forwarded to Gizmo and then forwarded on to us in Guinea. Being forwarded from Gizmo to Guinea will cost $0.15 per minute but that is much better than $0.40. Text messages from Guinea to North America are about $0.11 so if we want to talk to family or friends we can text message them and have them call us which ends up costing us $0.15 instead of $0.44 per minute! I’ve tested it out and it seems to work. We’ll see how it does in a few months with some REAL testing!

Google Voice also transcribes and emails voice mail so any voicemail you leave will be sent to our inbox! So, feel free to call us! We look forward to keeping in close contact with you all.

On this day..

• Mercredi! - 2011
• 2 Hours to Grad - 2007
• Jungle Camp Questions - 2006
• New tenants - 2005