Imagine having just one phone number for all the phones you have: mobile phone, office phone, residence landline. . . Imagine not having to check a host of answering machines. Imagine never missing a call, whether you are at home or office or on a beach. Imagine having just one phone number for life.

Well, a California, US-based company -- GrandCentral -- has just turned imagination into reality, says a New York Times report.

The company allows you to choose one, new unified phone number which sort of 'replaces' all your other numbers: mobile and landline. It's a new Web application that lets you consolidate all of your phone numbers into one number.

Once you get this number, all you need to do is send it everyone you want to. Whenever somebody dials your new GrandCentral phone number, all your phones will ring simultaneously, and you can pick up the call on any of your phones.

No longer will anyone have to track you down by dialing each of your numbers. It will no longer matter if you're home, at work or on elsewhere. The GrandCentral phone number will find you.

If your cellphone is low on battery, you can easily switch to any of your other phones. To switch the call from a cellphone to a landline or vice versa, you can press the * key on your phone to make all your phones ring again, so that you can pick up on a different phone in the middle of a call.

The service will also centralise your voicemail, meaning your voice messages will also come in one voice mail box. You can reach your voice messages by dialling in from any phone, or you can play the messages on the Web (at GrandCentral.com), or you can ask to be notified by e-mail where an embedded link will take you online to play the voice mail, says the NYT report.

GrandCentral was founded in late 2005 by Craig Walker and Vincent Paquet, who had worked closely together for years while running internet telephony pioneer Dialpad Communications.

The GrandCentral service comes packed with more features. Apart from letting you to roll all your phone numbers into one, and checking your messages by phone, email, or online, it also allows you to:

• Keep all your messages online for life.
• Record and store your phone calls (just like voicemail).
• Send annoying callers to SPAM.
• Click-to-dial from your address book.
• Record a custom voicemail greeting for each caller.
• Turn your Mp3s into the ring tones that your callers can hear.
• Forward, download, flag, and add notes to your messages.
• Every caller is also announced by name when you answer the phone.
• You can listen to a message someone is leaving, just as you can on a home answering machine. When you get a call, you can then press 1 to accept it, press 2 to send the call to voice mail, or press 3 to listen in on voice mail, or press 4 to accept and record the call.
• You can customise voice mail greeting for each person in your address book.
• Privacy filters/Call blocking
• Convert your mp3 files into ring tones
• Call screening
• Address book importing
• Click-to-dial from your address book

GrandCentral has pitched the service, which is currently in Beta testing phase, as 'One number for life.'

Great service, indeed, but with a flaw: now people will find it very easy to track you down.