Google Introduces Fiber Phone Service Across Internet Channels

Google to launch Fiber Phone to serve households for penetrating into the Internet market

Google Fiber failed to serve some customers when it launched its cable-style television subscription and high-speed internet services without a “triple play” that included phone hookups regularly offered by its rivals.

On March 29, 2016, Google announced including Fiber Phone – phone facility over online channels with some features that come with free Google voice service. For instance, $10 per month phone provides comparatively low charges for international calls and transcribed voice messages sent by e-mail and text.

Also like the company’s Google Voice, calls could be forwarded from the new home phone to a mobile phone. The same number could be dialed to make calls from a computer.

The announcement by the organization indicates the service includes “a Fiber Phone box” but for that, consumers will be required to provide their own phones. Conventional cellular phones will work with the Fiber Phone box. On March 29, 2016, the blog posted by the Mountain View based organization did not clarified when would it start offering phone service for sale or in which market the service would be offered first.

Some consumers told they were hesitant to sign up for Google Fiber as they yet wanted handset anchored in their houses with more reliable connections than those which are usually offered with cellular phones.

For international calling, the service uses the international rates of Google Voice. The real hardware a user receives from the technology organization would not be a handset. The VoIP phone box will connect a user’s new fiber connection to an old-school landline handset.

The service clearly is an offshoot of Project Fi/ Google Voice. It carries a huge part of similar feature set. A user gets a "cloud based" phone number that he/she can forward to every phone with do-not-disturb, call screening and spam filtering features.

There is a voice-mail technology with speech-to-text transcription, which needs an app or some kind of a website. There is also caller ID, call waiting or essentially, 911 access.

Providing phone service indicates that Google now needs to abide by the 911 regulations of the Federal Communications Commission along with many other state tax regulations.

The Kansas City Business Journal claimed that such requirements were sufficient to stop the company from unveiling with a phone service option, but now it is apparently prepared to deal with these additional regulations.

The announcement suggests the new Fiber Phone is being rolled out "in a few areas to start," but finally it will be offered to every residential Fiber city.

Google encourages interested stakeholders to fill out an “Interest Form” so that they could be kept in loop.