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Long live the landline: Google announces new Fiber Phone

This is Google's vision of the landline.

Tech

Posted on Mar 29, 2016   Updated on May 27, 2021, 12:41 am CDT

If you live in a rural area or even in a large apartment complex, you are probably familiar with dropped calls due to poor cellular reception. You may have even dreamt back to a simpler time when landlines provided a reasonably reliable connection to the voice on the other end. 

Google, one of the biggest influencers of today’s technology has found a solution to your network nightmares. 

Landlines.

Google

Google announced the Google Fiber Phone today, a new approach to home phone service that takes the familiar landline and throws in cloud technology and a bunch of other perks for a pretty reasonable price. For $10 a month, users will receive unlimited local and nationwide calls, international calls at the same rates as Google Voice, caller ID, call waiting, and a 911 service. They will also receive transcribed voicemail messages on their cell phones via text.

Additionally, there is no need to worry about missing a call when you are not home when using Google’s service. The Fiber number lives in the cloud which means incoming calls can be transferred to your mobile phone when you are out and about. 

However, nothing about this new offering is particularly groundbreaking. People have been linking their home phones with Google Voice through the use of a $40 VoiP adapter for years now, but this solution creates the Google Fiber trifecta: Internet, TV, and home phone service. 

Fiber Phone is becoming available in phases to markets that already have Google Fiber coverage. You can check whether your area is covered on the products official webpage

Photo via Google 

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*First Published: Mar 29, 2016, 9:02 pm CDT