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Google has launched a phone/landline service for its Google Fiber customers, called Fiber Phone. It allows you to use a "cloud-based" phone number from any tablet, PC, or phone:
For $10/month, you get unlimited local and nationwide calling, and the same affordable rates as Google Voice for international calls. 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.
[...] Your Fiber Phone number lives in the cloud, which means that you can use it on almost any phone, tablet or laptop. It can ring your landline when you're home, or your mobile device when you're on-the-go. [...] To stay updated on the latest, sign up here.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday March 30 2016, @05:49PM
Does this mean Google Voice is on the way out, or is going to cost $10 a month soon?
Because I use Google Voice this way, with a Obihai device [obihai.com], for free calls (incoming and outgoing) anywhere in the US and Canada, and dirt cheap calls world wide.
Been using this for almost 5 years now as my only "home phone".
http://blog.obihai.com/2014/09/google-voice-and-obihai-update.html [obihai.com]
Can even send faxes (remember those) on it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday March 30 2016, @05:52PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:02PM
Me too, I've had an Obihai with Google Voice for a couple of years now... I assumed Google Voice was just a "Google Service" like + and all the rest. It can't use as much bandwidth as YouTube.
Maybe the $10/month is a service fee for people who aren't comfortable setting up and maintaining their own VoIP box and using it as their only "landline" - and perhaps the $10/month also goes toward 911 system compatibility.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:52PM
I think you are right, the $10 probably is regulation fee recovery, such as Emergency 911 Cost Recovery, Regulatory Recovery Fee, Federal, State and Local Services fees and such. All that stuff that is tacked onto phone bills.
Google Talk has not been selling itself as a phone service, but rather just a answering machine service for cellular phones, (with free-ish voip calling tacked on). It makes no pretense of handling 911, because it was originally tied to your phone and only handled incoming calls. (They have since slipped in outgoing via the app).
Every year I get an email telling me "Good news, another year of free google voice". I was worried this would end, and they would start charging for it.
If I need 911, I just grab my cell phone. Our county dispatchers have Phase 2 location, handset generated, (for all cellular carriers in this area) so its accurate to 50 meters.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:11PM
Yes and no.
This does not mean much wrt to Google voice, it is about Google Fiber going for the trifecta of internet, tv and phone.
But gvoice is being phased out, or transformed, depending on how you choose to view it - google wants gvoice users to move to google hangouts which does everything gvoice does, but not exactly the same way, and lets you do voip calling on android handsets too. Since google killed SIP access to gvoice a couple of years ago, that is an improvement over recent history but still not as good as longer-term history.
There is also Google Fi [google.com]which is a cell phone service that is abstracted from the cellular network, it prefers wifi but also uses a couple of different cellular networks depending on things like cost and signal strength.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday March 30 2016, @07:51PM
Actually, its not at all clear that Google Voice is being phased out.
There were rumors of this back in 2014, but those have largely subsided by now, as Google laid them to rest.
Hangouts is what really is being scaled back. They are dropping sms and mms support, but still keeping wifi calling to other hangouts users. They have a POTS bridge in hangouts to access land lines.
But you need to add the Google Hangouts Dialer [google.com] to call anything except another hangouts user. And that dialer is something of a split personality.
Oddly, if you DO add the Hangouts Dialer, AND you already have a Google Voice Number, it will use Google Voice rather than the Hangouts-to-voip bridge. (You will see that right above the key-pad when you select manual dialing in Hangouts Dialer)
Your Caller id will show up as your GV number, instead of your cellular number, and call backs will go to your google voice number. If you don't have a google voice number, caller ID will be your cell number, and call backs will go to your cell minutes.
And if you don't have a cellular plan, and just use a wifi tablet, or smartphone without a sim, ? who knows...
So the whole thing is a huge bowl of spaghetti right now, and google has two products that separately or in conjunction don't really handle all the functions properly. They probably need to start over, because hangouts was over-scoped, and never did much of anything properly or smoothly, and GV languished for way too long.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 30 2016, @05:55PM
It’s like Google Voice on bad steroids.
Isn't it just ... google voice?
I mean, I've been using GV as a front end since the really old days when I think it was called "grand central" or something. I've been thru three cell phone companies since then, and I just keep forwarding my cell to a new number. It can send my incoming cell calls to my home phone, which was nice when I had a cell provider with awful coverage at my house but pretty good coverage everywhere else. I like its voicemail quite a bit. Its also pretty good at blocking telemarketers. Its nice enough.
Anyway the point is I have years of experience as a GV user and I think I already have all the features mentioned other than not being a customer of google fiber?
Before all the squawking about the big evil google stealing my soul to sell, its 2016, I haven't used legacy "phone" to communicate in years, other than elderly relatives who don't use more modern stuff, or work calling to report an emergency. I mean, if they're selling it, I feel bad for them because they can't be getting much for it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:06PM
I started using GV when we moved into a house with a metal roof - good coverage outside from any provider, but spotty anywhere inside, so we dusted off the old 5GHz Panasonic wireless phone set, bought new batteries for the handsets and an Obihai VoIP access box, and haven't had to pay for or maintain anything since then, and the 5GHz phones work anywhere in the house and yard without a problem.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Wednesday March 30 2016, @11:28PM
How does that work? I have a gvoice account, but what info is programmed into the obihai to make it connect? Was it easy to figure out? Sounds very interesting!
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 31 2016, @12:01AM
Just Google search for the instructions - it takes less than 10 minutes.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/06/24/7408365/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2016, @06:20PM
gvoice is the one google product I use too (since grand central first opened their doors too)
I would switch if there was something with at least the same set of features and the same ease of pseudo-anonymity.
I can buy a burner phone to create a new gvoice account (you need a working legit phone to create a new gvoice account now) and then let the burner expire and keep the gvoice account for texting and/or hook it up to an obihai routed through a VPN so even if you have multiple obihais they don't share the same IP address as far as google knows and since it is "free" I don't have to worry about payment info being used to unmask my privacy either.
That lets me use different phone numbers for different parts of my life and firewall even the meta-data
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2016, @10:09PM
wow! they mentioned this in the last part of a famous book.
they tattoo a number on your forehead.
obviously the "real number" everybody associates with you isn't the
real number in "do no evils" database but the latter is obviously the more important one.