Google Voice now available in Hawaii, Alaska

The trend of blocking services for foreigners seem to be on the increase in the U.S., Hulu, Pandora, and Google Voice are three high profile web sites/services that do this. Why? No, you don't need to answer that --it is just plain stupid!

I have spoken.

;-)

I live in Honolulu, and I'm glad that calls to Hawaii are now free. Thank you, Google Voice.

Now, when will we be able to get an 808 area code Google Voice number? There are over 1.2 million people living in the 50th state, and our only area code is 808. Please Google, show us a little love!

I don't share my GV number with local friends and co-workers because I don't want them having to call me long-distance. Instead, I've been patiently waiting for the 808 numbers to be released. Now that they announced that they are including Hawaii and Alaska as part of the US, this would be a perfect opportunity to also come up with 808 numbers.

For the record: I'll gladly pay the $10 fee to switch my current number to an 808 one.

Hm, how was it before? I'm in Hawaii and have Google voice. I've called my Google voice number and it forwarded to my mobile phone. I don't think I got charged anything for that other than minutes.

alaska. lol. baby steps... lol.
the next step: free calls in isle cayman
c'mon, with all respect.

pg808, don't know if you, or anyone else has noticed, but the ONLY VOIP providers that offer 808 area code phone numbers are "LOCAL" companies. There isn't one single non-local Internet Phone provider anywhere in the world that provides 808 phone numbers. Do a Google search and no information as to why this is the situation will come up. But "why" is this? It has been years since the first Vonage and other Internet phone services became available. In the early days of Vonage, if you tried to get an 808 number, they'd tell you that they were working on it and that 808 numbers should be added sometime soon. Well, here we are several years later, a LONG ways from "soon", and it still hasn't happened. Something is obviously going on with this, since we are just about the only state in the entire country with no local Internet phone numbers available. Personally, I wouldn't hold much hope for Google becoming the first one to offer us this service. I don't think it's going to happen. I think this has something to do with local telecommunications companies, and maybe even government leaders too (the good ol' boys), wanting to keep the VOIP money inside Hawaii and lock up the local market in order to keep outside competition from coming in. This certainly is not a technical issue! I could be wrong but this situation looks very suspicious to me.