Google Fiber makes phone service official, starts at $10 a month

Google Fiber Phone. Phone handset not included.

Google Fiber's phone service is official. Secret invitations to the phone service leaked back in January, but today Google announced the addition of optional phone service for Google Fiber residential customers. The addition of phone service allows Google Fiber to finally compete with "Triple Play" home offerings, which bundle Internet, TV, and phone service from a single company.

In addition to the regular Google Fiber bill, "Fiber Phone" costs $10 per month for unlimited local and nationwide calling. For international calls, the service uses Google Voice's international rates. The actual hardware you receive from Google won't be a phone, it's a VOIP phone box that will bridge your new-school fiber connection with an old-school landline phone.

The service is clearly an offshoot of Google Voice/Project Fi and carries over most of that feature set. You get a "cloud based" phone number that you can forward to any phone with spam filtering, call screening, and do-not-disturb features. There's a voicemail system with speech-to-text transcription, which we'd imagine requires an app or website of some kind. There's also call waiting, caller ID, and, critically, 911 access.

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