Mountain View, California — Back in July last year, Apple infamously provoked some controversy when it removed a number of Google Voice application for the iPhone, effectively banning it from ever appearing on anything but jailbroken iPhones. Now, in the wake of Apple’s relaxed rules pave way for third party applications offering access to the Google Voice VoIP service have reappeared on the iPhone app store.
A third-party Google Voice app called GV Connect is now available in the App Store. The application empowers sending of texts and making calls over the iPhone’s data connection which will can save users considerable amounts of money.
Such applications stand to impact profits of mobile carriers and Apple has previously shown willingness to disable features at the behest of carriers such as USB tethering capability. The service’s potentiality to use a mobile carrier’s data plan to send cheaper SMS texts and international phone calls irked both Apple and its carrier partners like AT&T. Hence, the rejection of Google’s Voice application ultimately lead to an investigation from the US FCC on anti competition grounds.
Now two complete Google Voice applications have reappeared on the official iTunes App Store. Both are third-party products, using Google’s API. The two apps — GV Mobile + and GV Connect — have similar functionality. GV Connect is $2.99 and a no-brainer for Google Voice users: It makes it nearly as easy to use Google Voice for outgoing calls as it is to make a garden-variety call, and provides easy access to Google Voice voicemail and SMSes. And GV Mobile looks like it may be even better, which appeared on iTunes where it is now available for download. You can check it out over here.
Now, Apple’s change of heart regarding application publishing rules has been widely attributed to the mounting number of investigations in the US and by the EU into anti-competetive practices.
Nevertheless, the relaxed rules paved the way for other third party applications which implement standard VoIP protocols such as SIP which can be used with any number of provides around the world, each of which offering local phone numbers and typically much cheaper calls than the mobile carriers provide. Last week, Apple informed Google Voice Mobile developer Sean Kovacs that he could resubmit his app to iTunes and that it would most likely be accepted. True to form, Kovacs recently submitted GV Mobile to the iTunes App Store where it was subsequently welcomed back with open arms.
And in case you are curious about what is so great about Google Voice, check out the video below.