Google Announces Fiber Phone, a $10/Month Home Telephone Service

Google on Tuesday announced Fiber Phone, a home phone service for Fiber subscribers. For $10 a month, Fiber Phone offers unlimited local and nationwide calling, and "the same affordable rates as Google Voice for international calls." From company's blog post: You can keep your old phone number, or pick a new one. You can use call waiting, caller ID, and 911 services just as easily as you could before. Fiber Phone can also make it easier to access your voicemail -- the service will transcribe your voice messages for you and then send as a text or email. Writing for TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey explains why this matters: Fiber Phone features unlimited calls to the U.S., call filtering and blocking, voicemail transcription, and call forwarding to your mobile so you don't miss that telemarketer. It may seem an anachronism, but if Google aims to be the main or even sole conduit for communication in the areas it is expanding to, it does have to offer this.

Comments

Re:$10/month plus

[fonos]

I take it you've never seen a Google Fiber bill before. This is how mine looks:

Gigabit Ethernet $70.00
Taxes, Fees, Surcharges $0.00
Total: $70.00

Re:Filter our telemarketers

[chihowa]

The first thing I think when I hear "free service" is to wonder how I am really paying for this service. This company will have complete logs of all of your incoming calls, which could be worth something to somebody. They claim otherwise, though.

From their site:

How Does Nomorobo Stay In Business?
The service is free for consumers but business and public safety organizations pay to license the data. For consumers, robocalls are annoying. But, for businesses it costs them real money. And, for EMS systems (like 911), it could be a matter of life and death.

These are the people that don't mind paying for the service and using it directly in their telephone equipment.