Many people can already buy TV and Internet service from Google Fiber. Now, the company that
brought gigabit speeds to Austin and Kansas City is moving deeper into the telecom industry by offering
its own bundled telephone service.
For $10 (roughly Rs. 660) a month, Google Fiber customers soon will be able to buy an add-on known as
Fiber Phone – a service that, according to a company blog post, appears to mimic much of the
functionality of Google Voice. Voicemail on Fiber Phone can be automatically transcribed and sent to
your email. You’ll get unlimited domestic calling, as well as international calls at Google Voice’s rates.
And you’ll have access to one phone number that can be set up to ring all of your phones – whether
landline or mobile.
A series of leaked emails in January first uncovered Google Fiber’s plans to move into phone service. But
now the decision is official: Fiber Phone will roll out gradually across all of the company’s existing
markets. The company declined to name the initial launch markets, saying those details will come later.
The service comes with a little black box that sits beside your home phone. It has both ethernet and
phone jacks, and will work with most handsets except for old rotary phones, according to Kelly Mason, a
company spokesperson.
Google Fiber’s effort to draw in phone customers highlights how the company is becoming more like
traditional service providers even as many telecom companies are looking to become more like Internet
content firms. Even providers of cellphone service have been shifting their focus away from voice and
toward the more lucrative provision of mobile data. Reports this week suggest T-Mobile may soon unveil
new phone plan options that eliminate voice service entirely to give you a bigger bucket of data.
Fiber Phone fits within these trends in that it would help customers add some cloud-based functionality
to their home phones. But it’s not immediately clear why consumers would pick Fiber Phone over Google
Voice. The two services share many of the same features, but Fiber Phone carries a subscription cost and
requires an at-home installation that you don’t need with Google Voice. In this respect, Google Voice
might be considered a “better” service.
Fiber Phone could be appealing to those who currently buy their Internet and television from Google
Fiber, but still have their landline phone tied to another provider, such as Verizon. Signing up for Fiber
Phone would allow those Americans to eliminate one more bill from their lives and consolidate their
services into a double- or triple-play deal with Google Fiber.
But federal statistics show Americans are largely moving away from landline service anyway, embracing
a cellphone-only approach. Forty percent of US adults now use their cellphones exclusively.
Fiber Phone is more than a simple landline substitute, of course. But to really make the most of it, it
seems like you would A) need to be already subscribed to a landline service with another provider and B)
want to continue having landline service.
