I was fortunate enough to have a Grand Central account (which didn’t mind that my cell was Canadian) and when I was automatically converted, the system didn’t have a chance to reject my Canadian cell phone number. Unfortunately, when we moved we changed numbers. So now my Google voice is associated with a Canadian cell phone number that no longer exists (or at least, is not owned by me) and I can’t change it because GV won’t recognize a new Canadian number (and simply defaults to the old number).

So, I have a GV number, but it can’t be forwarded to my cell, nor can it send my cell phone text messages. I can still give the number out and people can still leave messages there, but I’m pretty sure there’s a lot of functionality I’m missing. Since I never had to go through the process of signing up for GV (it was GC back then), I don’t know whether you must enter a telephone number when registering. If so, I don’t think Joe could activate an account, even if he managed to get an invite.