Phone calls in Gmail arrive in Brazil

Google announced on Tuesday that it plans to make its phone calling feature available within Gmail in 38 countries, including Brazil. (Attention: Not to be confused with Google Voice.)

According to the company, the service charges will be extremely low and offer a fast means of communication to 150 cities worldwide without having to leave webmail or use additional devices.

“To help reduce the cost of staying connected, we are also reducing our rates worldwide,” said Pierre Lebeau, Product Manager, on the official Gmail blog.

Credits – which work in prepaid mode – can be purchased in four currencies (Euros, Sterling, Canadian Dollars, or US Dollars), all through Google Checkout itself.

Call cost

For calls made to Brazil, users will be charged at $ 0.04 p / min for calls to fixed numbers and $ 0.15 p / minute for mobile numbers.

For calls to the cities of So Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Gmail will charge you a lower rate of $ 0.02 p / minute. In Belo Horizonte, the cost of the call will be US $ 0.03 p / minute.

See table with all rates for the world.

In implementation

Google has warned that it should take a few days for new features to spread across all Gmail accounts:

"We are deploying this feature in the coming days, so if it is available in your country, you will see a small green phone icon at the top of your chat list and you will be ready to make calls," Lebeau explained.

For Google Apps accounts, the administrator needs to enable functionality:

“If you are a Google Apps user, your domain administrator needs to enable Google Voice and Google Checkout from the control panel in order to be able to use the new features,” he said.

Read more: Google offers multiple calls in Gmail