Rogers Canada has added a new service called RogersOneNumber. Surprisingly I had never heard about this service coming and I have to say I’m amazed at the features and I love it. Here is what the service consists of:

make and receive phone calls from your Rogers cell phone number using your computer without using your cell plan minutes!!
make video calls
send and receive text messages from your computer
make calls from anywhere in the world back to Canada for free
sync all your contacts between your phone and desktop

The service is pretty cool and easy to use. I had mine up and running in a few minutes. Basically you just have to go to the RogersOneNumber.ca website to set up your account, register your phone and download the software. Once the software is installed on your computer and you log into the website then your text messages and phone calls are sent simultaneously to both your computer and cell phone. If you happen to have a cell phone plan without a texting package then you'll be happy to hear that the text messages sent from the computer don't count on your cell phone plan - they are free (incoming and international texts still have costs applied). What's even better is that any calls you make from your computer are all free, including long distance calls! If you currently questioning having a traditional land-line in your house then this could be the tipping point for you. The voice calling feature even enables you to seamlessly switch the call from you phone to computer without hanging up on the person you are talking to. If the person you are talking to is using the same service you also have the option of enabling video so you can video chat just like Skype.

Those are the main, and most important features, but there are others like creating a Block list of numbers that can't contact you, call forwarding, Ring My Numbers (multiple phones can be programmed to ring when someone calls you), 911, email sync (Rogers Yahoo! and Gmail only) and contact sync. I haven't had any luck with contact sync but that could just because it's not compatible with my Windows Phone. [Update: this does work with Android]

And how much extra is all this? IT'S FREE!! Overall a great service and if you have a cell phone account with Rogers I'd highly recommend signing up!