A public launch has been anticipated since Google said in March the service would be “open to new users soon.”Users who have been using the service have been talking up its benefits.

“I've only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it's completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate, just in general,” said Kevin Dando, director of digital and education communications for PBS. “When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.”

Google Voice has a number of unique including call transfer between a user’s devices, multi-party conferencing, conversion of voice calls to text messages, cut-rate international calling, and call transcription.

Google also has integrated the Voice service with Gmail contact lists.