Google Struggles with Phone Number 'For Life'
Google's GrandCentral has promised its clients a single phone number "for life." Unfortunately, after local carriers dropped out, Grandcentral had to change the numbers of 400 clients.
GrandCentral, which Google acquired last month, had to change about
400 of the supposedly perpetual numbers it had assigned to clients.
By doing so, the call-management company may be creating for these clients the main problem GrandCentral was founded to solve.
The numbers had to be changed after a "local carrier partner" recently notified Google it would stop its service and thus would be unable to connect calls to the GrandCentral numbers issued in its coverage area.
How could you complain - it's free after all. However, the whole idea behind GrandCentral was that the GC number would never change, but your other numbers, the ones that ring - or do not ring - depending on your settings, could change at will. This was the beauty of the GrandCentral idea. If they can't keep this promise, how can users trust the service?
