GrandCentral Beta: Impressions
So I’ve been getting a lot of invites to random beta things recently. The latest one is GrandCentral, a sort of central hub for your phone number. It was just recently bought by Google, which is sorta neat. GrandCentral says:
GrandCentral doesn’t replace your phones; we just link them together and help them do more. How do we do that? We give people One Number…for Life – a number that’s not tied to a phone or a location – but tied to you.
With GrandCentral, you can be reached with a single number, answer a call at any phone you want, seamlessly switch phones in the middle of a call, and even know whether a call is important before you take it.
This idea is good in theory. My family’s had the same home phone number for like, 20+ years, and if we ever changed that number, a lot of people would instantly lose contact with us, since it’s the only thing point of contact they have. I signed up and chose a number in the 505 area code (they give you a bunch of choices and you pick one).
I change cell phone service a lot, which means I usually just change the number as well. It’s always a hassle to tell everyone when my phone number’s changed. With GrandCentral, I could just change the number that my primary number forwards to.
So far, the service works. I have it currently set up to ring on my cell phone, but you can also have it ring to other places as well. GrandCentral also supports things like spam filtering in case you get a telemarketer call.
I think the service is interesting, but I’m not sure I want to “change” my phone number with a service that’s still in beta. Who knows how long the company will be around? The fact that Google has acquired GrandCentral is a good sign, but I’m still a bit wary of giving people this number since it’d be a hassle to change it again.