Google slashed its rates for the Indian territory to 2 cents (90 paise) per minute. Google has moved out of US to serve customers in many countries and India is one of them. People in India would be able to receive and make international calls economically as earlier they had to pay 6 cents (Rs 2.70) per minute.
One can make calls at cheaper rater from Google phone-calls, wherever they may be. The rates are even highly competitive, as at some places the traditional phone service providers are expensive as compared to Google phone-calls. This was the reason of it being limited to US territory only till now.
Considering India, there is still a bit of confusion as would the Indian users of Google(Gmail) get a ‘go ahead’ sign from the Government of India to make calls inside India or no. this is because the Indian Government prohibits the usage of any such service to be used within India, so that there would not be any ‘disturbance’ to the well established phone companies in India.
There might be doubts for calls within India but for calls outside India, one can be assured that Google phone-calls can be used and even their family members and friends who stay abroad. The rates at 2 cents let the users have sufficient time to have leisure talks even which would not hurt their pockets, considering the fact that the usual call rates from a normal phone service provider in India is quite high. There is no restriction as far as location is concerned, one can make a call to anyone wherever they may be. However it is important to note that if this service of Google isn’t launched in that country one cannot make or receive calls at the said rates.
Google said that last year they had served people on the US soil with this service and they could accordingly make calls directly to landline or mobile phones to anyone via Gmail. Now this service is for many more who do not reside in US as one can now call in 38 new languages.
The reason because of which Google can offer its users to make calls at a rate which is cheaper than the traditional phone companies is that Google routes its calls via the Internet and the telephone network is only in connect at the very last moment. An example to explain the above is that if an Indian user calls to anyone who is in the U.S., then Google would route its traffic via the Internet to U.S. It extends its reach to the specific city in the U.S. and then Google would hook the call to the respective telecom network in that city in the U.S.
Google has even eliminated the difficulties which here earlier faced by users and now one can make calls without Internet traffic problems and the quality is even much better.
Calling to U.S. and Canadian phones is still cheaper as one would be only charged at one cent which converts up to 45 paise for a minute’s calling. This would mean that calling to U.S. from India would be cheaper as compared to the rates for local calls even. National network providers in India usually charge 50 paise for local and national calls and 45 paise would be still cheaper for users to call.