Alphabet's high-speed Internet service, Google Fiber, announced a fibre-based landline phone service yesterday.
Fiber Phone is cloud-based, allowing it to operate across multiple devices of the user's choice, such as landline phones, desktop and laptop computers, tablets and smartphones.
The service lets users keep their existing landline number or set up a new one, and offers unlimited calls to other users in the US, while international calls are priced identically to those made via Google Voice.
Fiber Phone will be progressively rolled out to all Google Fiber users for $10 per month, in addition to the $300 once-off construction fee users pay for "basic Internet", or the $70 or $120 monthly fee users pay for "Gigabit Internet", or "Gigabit Internet" plus TV.
Google Fiber is currently only available to users in specific cities - such as Kansas City, Missouri and Austin, Texas - and some of their surrounding areas.
No novelty
Fiber Phone offers users almost exactly the same functionality as Google Voice - the company's free Internet calling service available in the US, which allows users to "pick up calls from any phone", send text messages from their computer, and make international calls at variable per-country, per-minute rates.
"It's unclear why customers would pay $10 a month for [Fiber Phone], which is similar to the company's free Google Voice offering," writes Cnet's Marguerite Reardon. "It could appeal to families who already subscribe to Google's broadband and TV services but who also still pay for a landline service from another company," she speculates.
"It's essentially Google ticking the 'landline' box so it can compete more fully with cable and telco companies' 'triple play' Internet-TV-phone service packages," says Mashable's Pete Pachal.
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