
Google Fiber Phone - tejasm
https://fiber.google.com/phone/
======
rayiner
A landline phone service seems a bit anachronistic, but there is a place for
it. The future of telephony is here, but it sucks. Many here on HN probably
don't even remember this, but phone calls actually used to be intelligible.
Before cell phones and VOIP, before packet-switching and aggressive digital
compression, calls traveled over Ma Bell's glorious circuit-switched network.
You could actually understand what people on a conference call were saying,
instead of every other word dropping into the digital aether.

~~~
knodi123
It's amazing to remember how crystal clear phone calls used to be. I wonder if
there's a niche for the first service willing to use more bytes and sacrifice
efficiency in the name of analog-era call quality.

~~~
danpat
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wideband_audio)

and more specific to cellular phones:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-
Rate_Wideband](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_Wideband)

Search for "HD Voice" from the big cellular companies in the US. It usually
requires handset support.

~~~
X86BSD
I believe apple has supported this with the iPhone for several years now.

~~~
DiabloD3
As has Android, but AT&T and Verizon tend to lock out features like HD Voice
and Wifi Calling to be iPhone only.

~~~
X86BSD
T-Mobile is what I have. I think they were the first? But it sounds great on
T-Mobile. I usually just talk to the wife both of us on iPhones and T-Mobile.
And then I get the occasional call from someone else and I am like "What the
!@# get a decent connection/phone/whatever!"

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superuser2
Or the hacker's solution to maintaining a landline: get yourself a cheap SIP-
capable handset and an account with a wholesale SIP-trunking provider like
Flowroute ($1.25/mo for the number, $.0098/min outbound to CONUS, $.012/min
inbound).

Proxy through OpenVBX or Asterisk (can be hosted in the cloud or in your home)
if you want to get fancy with voicemail, IVR menus, forwarding, extensions for
different rooms in the house, etc.

ISP bundled phone services are essentially just packaging this for you with
10x markup. (I worked on VoIP installs for a summer when I was 14; it's not
that hard).

Only downside is most of these phones anticipate PoE, so you need to buy the
power supply (or a PoE injector) separately. You also have to trust yourself
to set up E911 correctly, or keep your cell phone around for that.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But won't that fail at the same time your home internet access fails - when
the ISP link goes down? I have a land line as a redundant link, for security.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
Isn't Google's offering here VOIP based? Sounds equivalent.

~~~
jauer
More or less with a number of caveats :)

Telco/ISP provided "VOIP" is often technically Voice over IP (as in the
protocol), but regulations and implementation can be subtly different from
VOIP (what people think of as Voice over the Internet AKA "over the top" or
OTT).

ISP-provided Voice often comes with requirements for battery backup in the
fiber/dsl/ata box so the user can call 911 during a power outage. There's also
reporting requirements for outages that prevent a user from dialing 911.

Also, with ISP-Voice the VOIP part is considered a implementation detail so it
can be given absolute QoS priority over internet traffic on a given last-mile
link. This helps with being able to call 911 while someone leaves bittorrent
open or whatever. OTT voip doesn't get that benefit (and that's not
technically a net-neutrality violation).

~~~
jonah
What are the regulations surrounding this? They say it works for 911.

Is it like Vonage or like telephone bundled from your cable provider?

Are they providing a battery-backed modem with RJ11 jack?

------
soyiuz
I like this idea, but I no longer trust Google to shepherd their side projects
in the long term. Google voice had amazing promise (and I still use it) but it
has also been a completely stagnant, without significant updates for a few
years now. It conflicts with Hangouts, Google Fi, and the Android SMS app.
Contacts are a mess. Ditto Google Groups.

~~~
grahamburger
Agreed on Google Voice, I used it all the way back to the Grand Central days
and I wish it were maintained more. That being said, the Hangouts integration
isn't _that_ bad now. I know it feels risky to hit that 'merge to hangouts'
button but I've been using it for a while without any huge inconveniences. The
only problem I run in to is when I need to search for old SMS messages, the
only way to do it after merging is by doing an 'in:chats searchterm' search in
Gmail. That wouldn't even be so bad except that I also use Inbox and the
search doesn't work in Inbox.

In theory I actually like the idea of having my SMS / Phone calls / emails /
hangouts merged pretty tightly, but there are a lot of subtle ways that they
could really screw up the user experience while making that happen so I'm
still nervous about it.

~~~
knodi123
> is by doing an 'in:chats searchterm' search in Gmail. That wouldn't even be
> so bad except that I also use Inbox and the search doesn't work in Inbox.

is there a way to access gmail once you've switched to inbox? I would love to
be able to edit my filters again...

~~~
magicalist
Just open gmail. They actually did a great job of keeping the two in sync.

(Unless you turned on the auto-redirect to inbox, in which case you need to
turn that off:
[https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6230358?hl=en](https://support.google.com/inbox/answer/6230358?hl=en))

~~~
grahamburger
Even with auto-direct turned on you can get to gmail from the Inbox interface:
[http://imgur.com/82iOdLf](http://imgur.com/82iOdLf)

~~~
knodi123
Thank you. Obviously that's easy to do- but I never would have thought to look
there! Now I can go home and look like a genius to my wife by stealing credit
from you.

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bpicolo
Sort of weird that it's something they bothered with, considering home phones
are on the out and out.

Edit: That said, I'm sure there are still 100m Americans with phone service,
but I don't know that the demographics of people who care to switch to google
fiber and need phones are really that overlapping. Then again, Google probably
researched this much more than I did. Just seems odd from my perspective.

~~~
daigoba66
E911 service is more reliable with a land line, even if it's VoIP, since the
location is fixed. Some recommend having a line just for that.

~~~
Animats
It's also powered from the central office, and doesn't require a local
electrical power source.

------
hnrodey
I think there's still a market for landlines although $10/month sounds like a
high price point for such a feature. Having a stationary phone is important
when you start having kids and they are old enough to know how to use it.
There's a gap of several years from when kids are old enough to know how to
call others versus old enough to warrant having their own mobile device.

So what happens in the scenario when the kid(s) is/are home with one parent or
the babysitter and the adult falls down the steps and is unconscious?
Certainly a 4-5 year can learn to call 911 for help and with a landline,
hopefully the phone is a static location and always available rather than
having to search through the house to find mommy or daddy's dead iPhone.

~~~
jonathansizz
> $10/month sounds like a high price point for such a feature.

As someone who is _forced_ by my monopoly ISP (with collusion from my local
gvmnt) to buy bundled basic phone service for an extra $30/month (if I want
internet access, which I do, and for which I have to pay $87/month for 30/5),
I say people in Google Fiber areas don't know how lucky they are.

------
daj40
I feel products like this -
[http://www.vtechphones.com/products/product_detail/1673](http://www.vtechphones.com/products/product_detail/1673)
\- (just an example) are a better solution to this problem. You dont need a
land line subscription, just a cell phone with bluetooth. When my parents get
home, their cell phones pair to the home phone, so when they receive a call,
the home phone rings. They don't have to carry around cell phones, and they
can place calls through their cell phones using the handsets. Seems
complicated at first, but saved headache and $$ in the end.

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I think the major selling point is that you're not SOL if you need to be
reached or call 911 while your cell is dead/left in the car/etc.

Not that it's an important enough point for me personally to have a land line,
but I can understand why a lot of people would favor that. As a $10/month add-
on for existing Fiber customers it's not a bad deal.

------
soared
Apparently no one actually fucking read the page.

> ON-THE-GO

>Get calls on your mobile phone. Stay connected no matter where you are. Have
Fiber Phone ring your landline when you're home or your mobile when you're
onthe-go.

This isn't about landlines at all.

~~~
elliotec
What? This is literally all about landlines. A minor feature is that you can
redirect the landline service to your mobile phone, which is a feature that
has been included in most landline services since mobile existed.

------
jd20
I recall reading almost three years ago about a pair of Google engineers who
won a prize in the FTC's Robocall Challenge, but at the time weren't pursuing
it further. I wonder if that is what's powering Fiber Phone's spam filtering?

I have a free Ooma landline, which isn't tied to a specific ISP, but if
someone can truly crack the problem of call spam, I could definitely see that
being a valuable service many would be willing to switch and pay for.

------
kemayo
I wonder if this means they'll be actually working on improving Google Voice
again after all these years, since it looks very much like this product
bundles it. (The "ring your mobile" and "transcribe your voicemail" features.)

------
jauer
Making a play for lifeline subsidies?

~~~
wlesieutre
I wonder if being a landline phone service provider makes it easier for them
to get access to utility poles?

~~~
jlgaddis
It was a helluva lot easier for us ($work) after we became a CLEC.

------
mrlyc
Anecdata: my Internet drops out for about fifteen seconds three or four times
a day. That's not a problem when I'm reading web pages or even downloading
files but it would cause problems during a phone call. My ISP offered me a
bundled Internet/IP phone combination for about $7 less per month than an
Internet/existing landline one. I'm glad I decided to keep the landline.

------
drewg123
$10 + taxes and fees seems a bit steep, considering that Ooma is < $4.00 once
the equipment is fully amortized.

The other odd thing is that "We can’t bring Fiber Phone to everyone at the
same time, so we’re doing it in phases.". Given how few fiber customers there
are, I'm wondering why that is..

------
akhilcacharya
So would it be possible to purchase this and use it as a primary phone service
on a data-only smartphone?

~~~
aroch
That's what Fi is for: [https://fi.google.com](https://fi.google.com)

~~~
sithadmin
Fi doesn't offer data-only plans. You can add data-only SIMs to your main
account, but nobody gets out of paying the $20 base rate for unlimited calling
and SMS/MMS.

------
carlob
Am I the only one who thinks this is very very expensive? I use an Italian
VoIP provider. The rates for international calls are very similar, but I don't
have to pay a monthly fee. So I end up charging 6 euros every 4-5 months.

------
josephby
John Oliver called this two weeks ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8dCYocuyI&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8dCYocuyI&feature=youtu.be&t=5m18s)

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spaceflunky
Oh cool! Let me check my address to see if it's available in my area...

Nope. Never? ok then. thanks.

------
hxegon
I get that Google is doing this (Fiber) in order to improve internet service,
which is in it's best interest. But I can't help but feeling like there is
some other goal here.

~~~
aviv
It's all about the bundle. They need to be able to offer the so-called triple
play that other ISPs do.

~~~
cthulhujr
This. It's an easy way to bend tax laws.

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kevinsd
Why do this when they have google hangout?

I can see that hangout is tied to a person but home phone is not. But making
it a different product/service and charging $10/month is absurd.

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ergothus
Wait....I thought adding a landline to your internet service magically made
everything cheaper. What is Google doing wrong?

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tbrock
I wish google fiber would completely take over (especially in San Francisco)
where we don't have fios.

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electriclove
Just get a device from Obihai and connect your Google Voice account to it. No
monthly charge

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agildehaus
Anyone know if it can pull Caller ID from Google Contacts? That'd be a killer
feature.

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rdl
Is there any hope they could do better than PSTN audio quality here?

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mtgx
So now Google Fiber will be under CALEA?

