Thanks! I’m glad it was helpful. I’m doing similar (Callcentric as main, with Skype backup). I’ve never been able to make a Google Voice account, being in Canada (though I’ve not tried for a while now). I actually have a few accounts at Callcentric now, and have been quite happy with them. They are priced well and the service is good. They are also big enough that most VoIP apps I’ve tried have presets for them. Then, I also have Skype on my mobile devices, both for video conferencing, but also Skype can sometimes get through odd wifi setups (probably firewalls) that I can’t make work with my VoIP apps when I’m in some places.

Yes, they are REALLY down… even the web-site… everything. They have no power. I’m a bit surprised so many companies in the area had no redundancy (Callcentric is hardly the only one!). I used to work at a Fortune 100 in data operations, and we had 2 completely different sites, one with 24-hour or less redundancy and another that could have gone live in a couple of days. We were shooting for more immediate fall-over when I left (and this was now over 5 years ago). I guess sometimes it takes a real disaster to get disaster-recovery plans in place. 🙁

BTW, Callcentric is communicating with customers the best they can via Twitter:
https://twitter.com/Callcentric

I would agree, and I think that kind of behavior stems from this basic economic principal today that strong profits are not enough. The idea is that you have to keep growing at some x% (often set by outside speculators) to be worthwhile to investors. This pushes companies to do crazy, unhealthy things to keep up with expectations. Google is probably just another victim of the public stock markets and day-trading mentality of today.

They are a strange company. Originally it seemed like they were going to try to revolutionize the world by building many cool “free” services and then making it back up on advertising to their customers — and they succeeded in many ways. Google Search, Google Mail, Google Maps, and even Google Voice in — it’s free state — are really amazing products. But somewhere along the line they started trying to commercialize their products…but still treat their customers the same. And then they started killing the “develop cool tech” type projects and instead are trying to do licensing and such.

I’m not sure what’s next for Google. I wouldn’t want to be an investor long term. I think they are a company trying to go through a major vision transition; but with an unclear vision of what they are transitioning into.

Oh, that would have been helpful for me to add to the article ( slaps head… ) Thanks for asking!

I ran into that problem part way through the process, and this is what Callcentric support said:
“Hello,
With other customers, they have provided a statement that “Google Checkout” provides when you purchase a number and the address is usually listed at the bottom.
If you can provide this document, or any other email from Google Checkout or Gizmo5 that displays your address, we will accept it.
If you have any questions or concerns, please let us know so we may proceed. We are sorry if this is an inconvenience to you. Thank you.”

I was able to submit a screen-shot of my Gizmo5 account page, which had the phone numbers which are mine. Then I submitted one of my recent statements where I added some minutes to my account. They accepted that. Af first, I figured I needed the statement where I purchased the phone number where both would be on the same ‘receipt’, which I’m not sure if I could have found.

Hope that helps! -Steve