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Google announced today that the free phone calls through Gmail added in 2010 have been extended for another year. Domestic calls in the U.S. and Canada are free, and international calls have a low fee schedule starting at $0.02 per minute. Users can also choose to link this to a free Google Voice account to receive inbound calls.

It's no surprise that Google has extended this service, since it just added it to Google+ Hangouts two weeks ago. Google has made several changes to Gmail chat to unify it with Google+, and this voice calling extends the reach of Gmail and Google+ to vastly more users.

Google Voice has long felt like it could become a real competitor to the major phone carriers. With its mobile phone apps and recent ability to port existing phone numbers to the service, the VOIP service has been moving closer to being a viable alternative. But today Google announces that it's found a partner, not a competitor among the major carriers.

The company has just announced that Google Voice will be fully integrated with Sprint. This means that all Sprint phones and all Sprint users will be able to tap into Google Voice's features without needing a special app.

The Y Combinator-backed startup TellFi announced today that it was launching a virtual phone service that would give one year of free service - and a local phone number - to anyone in Canada.

Since Google Voice dropped its Canadian service in in 2009, there have been no free virtual phone options to customers and businesses in that country. and TellFi, which also offers service in the U.S., has stepped in to fill that gap.

Google officially announced today that, for a one-time $20 fee, Google Voice users could move their mobile phone number over to the service. The move was rumored when Engadget first noticed the feature's availability last week, but Google said that it was only a test and that it planned to offer the feature to all users in the near future.

According to some, porting your phone number over to the service can be an experience not unlike an LSD trip gone awry. If you want to avoid this, Google offers a few tips on how to make it an easy and smooth transition.

Google is testing the option for Google Voice users to port their existing phone numbers to the company's Web-based telephony service.

Although Google Voice has become a popular VOIP service for some users, particularly with its ability to transcribe messages, it has always seemed like a supplement rather than a replacement for a "real" phone number. That's because, in no small part, you couldn't ever port your phone number over to the Google account. Instead you had to set up a new Google Voice number and then construct a system of forwarding calls to it.

Before you go getting too excited, know that this morning's announcement about support for Google Voice on the iPad and iPod Touch comes with one big "but" - you can't make any phone calls.

According to Google product manager Marcus Foster, the newest version of Google Voice has hit the shelves and it "lets you use all the features of the app on these devices, such as sending and receiving free text messages - except, of course, make cellular calls."

In 2009, the fact that Apple didn't approve Google's official app for its Google Voice telephony service was one of the big tech stories of the summer. Since then, the tension between Apple and Google has only increased, but just a few weeks ago, Apple allowed a few unofficial Google Voice apps into its App Store and today, the official Google Voice for iPhone app is making its debut.

Keeping up with every RSS feed item and tweet is hard enough for anybody, let alone someone trying to run a business. That's why at the end of every week, ReadWriteBiz rounds up the week's most important tech news and insights for small and medium-sized businesses.

On Tuesday, Fortune magazine writer Seth Weintraub discussed the availability of Google Voice to Google Apps business customers, and what it may mean for companies big and small. Weintraub compares the significance of Google Voice for businesses to that of email, and suggests that "a frugal business can now forgo the purchase of a phone entirely, instead relying on Google Voice."

Google Voice, Google's call routing and VOIP service, is finally coming to Google Apps according to Fortune tech blogger Seth Weintraub. Weintraub writes that Google Voice is now enabled for his Google Apps account and the feature should be rolling out to others over the next few days. Update: Google's Jessica Kositz reminds us that Google Voice and several other tools have been available on an opt-in basis since September. Update 2: Kositz further clarifies that Voice is not being rolled out to customers that don't opt-in. Weintraub opted in. Move along, nothing to see here...

Mobile VoIP software company Fring has launched a new service called, not too subtly, "FringOut," which aims to compete head-on with Skype's "SkypeOut" feature by offering cheap phone calls worldwide. The service, available in a preview version since mid-August, lets Fring users call the landlines or mobile phones of non-Fring users by purchasing credits to pay for the calls.

At present, the feature is only available on Nokia devices, but the company says iPhone and Android support is on the way "soon." As for the prices, calls start at only 1c/minute in many locations, making it often a low-cost alternative to Skype, whose SkypeOut rates start at 2.3c/minute, according to its "pay per minute" pricing page.