Old-timey Google just launched a landline phone service
For Google, it's Throwback Tuesday.
The company typically likes to stand on the bleeding edge of technology (think self-driving cars and multi-modal drones), but today it's looking back at the venerable landline. Google is launching Fiber Phone, a new service tied to its Fiber Internet service, which it has slowly rolled out in the U.S. over the past few years.
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Fiber Phone is basically landline service for Google Fiber customers. It costs an extra $10 a month on top of the $70 (gigabit Internet only) or $120 (gigabit Internet + TV) services that Fiber offers, which gives you unlimited local and nationwide calling.
International calls cost the same as Google Voice. Expected landline features like call waiting, caller ID and 911 all work on Fiber Phone, and it includes the same (often questionable) voice-to-text transcriptions that Google Voice offers.
The service can work with your existing phone number, and since Fiber Phone is cloud-based, it works with the hardware you choose: landline phone, laptop, tablet or whatever. It can even ring your cellphone when you're not home.
Google Fiber product manager John Shriver-Blake correctly points out in Google's announcement that landlines haven't gone away and that they still have a role to play -- especially with families. Unlike other Google services, however, Fiber Phone doesn't appear to have much in the way of a killer feature -- it's essentially Google ticking the "landline" box so it can compete more fully with cable and telco companies' "triple play" Internet-TV-phone service packages.
Google's landline service will roll out to residential customers in "a few areas" before rolling out to all locations with Fiber. If you have Fiber and are interested in the service, you can visit Google's signup page.
A representative for Google confirmed to Mashable that Fiber Phone is not an early April Fool's joke.
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Topics Google
Pete Pachal was Mashable’s Tech Editor and had been at the company from 2011 to 2019. He covered the technology industry, from self-driving cars to self-destructing smartphones.Pete has covered consumer technology in print and online for more than a decade. Originally from Edmonton, Canada, Pete first uploaded himself into technology journalism at Sound & Vision magazine in 1999. Pete also served as Technology Editor at Syfy, creating the channel's technology site, DVICE (now Blastr), out of some rusty HTML code and a decompiled coat hanger. He then moved on to PCMag, where he served as the site's News Director.Pete has been featured on Fox News, the Today Show, Bloomberg, CNN, CNBC and CBC.Pete holds degrees in journalism from the University of King's College in Halifax and engineering from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. His favorite Doctor Who monsters are the Cybermen.
