Telecoms chase after Google Voice's innovative calling features

Google's pickup of Grand Central, a little Web startup with big ideas for revolutionizing phone use, is starting to look pretty smart two years later. The recently revamped version called Google Voice is beginning to spread to curious consumers in a similar fashion as Gmail's closed beta helped to conquer a sector of the Web-based e-mail sector. As more people get hip to Google Voice's perks of getting free voice mail transcription and e-mail alerts, having one number ring all of your phones and scoring free calls and text messages, some telecoms are quickly working behind the scenes to catch up.