Phone Number For Life? Not Quite
A few weeks after Google bought GrandCentral for many millions, there are some changes afoot at the service. There is word that some GrandCentral users who had signed up for a phone number for life are finding out that it isn't exactly the case …
Context & Ripple Effects
GrandCentral built its early following on a single promise: one phone number that follows the user anywhere — one commenter even describes leaving Vonage for exactly that portability. That pitch is what made Google's June 2005-era-era acquisition of the startup for many millions look like a consumer-services play rather than a feature grab.
Less than two months after Google welcomed users aboard on its own blog, the promise is fraying: TechCrunch and GigaOM both report today that some customers are being disconnected and issued new numbers, breaking the 'one number for life' guarantee. A parallel post argues the episode shows how beta web applications can bite in ways beyond simple data loss.
First-order effects
- Affected GrandCentral users lose the number they may have already printed, published, or handed to contacts — the exact switching cost that made the service sticky over incumbents like Vonage.
Second-order effects
- Every competing one-number service now inherits an argument it did not have to make before: a startup's lifetime promises can be voided by its acquirer, which raises the bar on what 'permanent' means in marketing copy across the voice-over-IP market.
Third-order effects
- If acquirers can renumber a user base without consequence, identity services — phone numbers included — get priced by users as rented rather than owned, pushing the burden of permanence onto carriers and regulators who actually control numbering resources.
The trend: Web startups are selling durable personal identifiers faster than their acquirers are willing to honor them, making beta-service trust the next battleground for hosted communications.