IE11 Not Supported

For optimal browsing, we recommend Chrome, Firefox or Safari browsers.

Google Fiber Adding Landline-Like Phone Option to Home Internet Bundle

On Tuesday, the company announced it is adding Fiber Phone — phone service over Internet channels with some of the features that come with the firm’s free Google Voice service.

By Scott Canon, The Kansas City Star

Google Fiber missed out on some customers when its high-speed Internet and cable-style TV subscription services debuted without a “triple play” that included phone hookups routinely offered by its competitors.

On Tuesday, the company announced it is adding Fiber Phone — phone service over Internet channels with some of the features that come with the firm’s free Google Voice service. For example, the $10-a-month phone offers relatively low rates for international calls and transcribed voice messages delivered by text and email.

Also like Google Voice, calls could be forwarded from that home phone to a cellphone. The same number could be used to place calls from a computer.

Google’s announcement said that the service includes “a Fiber Phone box” but that customers will have to supply their own handsets. Conventional phones and cellphones will work with the box.

Introducing Fiber Phone. Your home phone on Google Fiber: https://t.co/94ycRUthex pic.twitter.com/ixqqYq5ZDi — Google Fiber (@googlefiber) March 29, 2016
Google Fiber launched in late 2012 in a few neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kan., the first city in the country where the California tech giant began selling ultrafast Internet connections. It coupled Web hookups with TV subscriptions over high-capacity fiber-optic lines running directly to home customers.

The company has since expanded broadly across the Kansas City market and to a handful of cities scattered around the country. Kansas City has since seen phone and cable companies offer higher broadband speeds at prices that compete with Google — distinct at first because it offered 1-gigabit-per-second connections at consumer prices.

The company’s blog post on Tuesday did not make clear when it would begin selling phone service or what market would see the service first.

“We’ll be introducing Fiber Phone in a few areas to start,” the post said. “Over time, we’ll roll out Fiber Phone as an option to residential customers in all of our Fiber cities.”

Some customers had said they were reluctant to sign up for Google Fiber because they still wanted phones anchored in their homes with more reliable connections than are typical with cellphones.

“If Google aims to be the main or even sole conduit for communication in the areas it is expanding to,” website TechCrunch said Tuesday, “it does have to offer this.”

©2016 The Kansas City Star (Kansas City, Mo.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.