Internet giant Google has revealed it is to partner with shelters in the Californian city of San Francisco to provide homeless people with a phone number and voicemail facility.The announcement was made at a Project Communications and Respect for Everybody event held recently in the city and is an expansion of a service that was started by GrandCentral, a firm acquired by Google last year.
Under the initiative, the search engine provider aims to provide people without a home with the convenience of personalised telephone access to enable them to pursue employment opportunities, among other things.
The maintenance of the programme and any corresponding accounts will be entirely free for participants.
GrandCentral is an internet service that links customers' phone numbers together, allowing them to be routed to a home, business or mobile phone using a single number.
The Google-owned start-up had already been offering the free service to people in San Francisco through a project entitled Homeless Connect.
Google has now revealed, however, that it is to expand the project and partner directly with homeless shelters that will now be able to give out phone numbers and voicemail accounts to individuals at anytime.
Commenting on the initiative, a Google spokesman said: "When you lose your home, you lose more than your house. You lose a permanent way of staying in touch with family members, employers, and social service providers," CNET News.com reports.
"Being able to give a phone number to people and access voicemail can be a very powerful thing in sustaining quality of life," the spokesman added.
