Last year, Rogers rolled out its smartphone versions of its Number One App – previously available on the web, and for Tablets – that allows users to make and receive phone calls using their Rogers phone number over data lines or Wi-Fi rather than the usual voice networks. In November, that capability was given to smartphone users – if a Rogers’ customer is traveling and their voice connection is less than ideal, they can make and receive calls using the data connection. The App also allows the user to setup Call Forwarding or Ring My Numbers, which allows the user to forward their calls to one or more numbers so they would never miss a call.
This ability essentially eliminates the need for a long distance plan – the App sits in the background and using VoIP allows users to receive calls over their data networks. Outgoing calls are free to any Canadian number and brief tests our source did though the quality was pretty good – it uses Counterpath’s wide-band audio codec, similar to Skype or Google Hangouts. This is an especially nice tool for Rogers’ business customers that travel a lot and they don’t want a ‘strange’ number showing up on their recipient’s ID – calling this way, the caller’s cell phone number appears on the Caller ID of the person receiving the phone call…making it appear that you are calling them from ‘home’ no matter where you are. You can also text message with the App and the outgoing text messages do not count towards your monthly allotment.
Rogers has just made a great update to its One Number App – it now has the ability for you to use multiple instances on the same account. In other words, because of its inability to assign multiple 9-1-1 numbers on the same account, if you were signed in on your smartphone and then would sign in on your tablet, your smartphone would be disconnected from the service…and vice versa.
With the new 3.0.6 version, the One Number App will ask the user to when they log in to enter a 9-1-1 address for emergencies so that the paramedics can be dispatched to the proper location, if needed. For now, the update works for iPhone, iPad and Android tablet users, but the smartphone version for Android has yet to get it the upgrade, and hopefully that will occur in the near future.
Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know if you have taken advantage of the One Number App in your travels and how good it works…as always we would love to hear from you.
