Making a play for lifeline subsidies?
Bundling this with internet and cable is also a sneaky way to manipulate taxes.
Google Fiber Phone
61–70 of 134 posts
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#62I 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.
It's all about the bundle. They need to be able to offer the so-called triple play that other ISPs do.
This. It's an easy way to bend tax laws.
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#63A 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 pe…
You could also have a conversation in real time, and not delayed by a second. Cell phone delay has made it impossible for me to carry on a meaningful conversation with anyone.
There's also value in having a phone number for a house or a family, separate from phone numbers of individual people. I don't want my utility company or my cable company having my cell number. But I'm not the only person that can make decisions about anything we might need to talk to them about anyway. The house number reaches both my wife and me. Cell #s can't do that.
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#64Anyone know if it can pull Caller ID from Google Contacts? That'd be a killer feature.
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#65I 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.)
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Isn't Google's offering here VOIP based? Sounds equivalent.
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).
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#67Sort 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.
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.
It's also powered from the central office, and doesn't require a local electrical power source.
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#68A 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 pe…
This is crazy, because I'm pretty much too young to remember a time when phones ever sounded good. The reason I prefer text to call isn't because I don't like to talk to people - I've just always found call quality to be utterly trash. Maybe this is part of the reason the younger generations prefer texting.
The superior sound of vinyl is making a comeback as it is 'discovered' by a younger generation.
Can landline's be that far behind?
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#69So would it be possible to purchase this and use it as a primary phone service on a data-only smartphone?
There are a number of MVNOs coming to market with data-only SIM cards and their own branded dialer apps. Some have free international data roaming.
Re: Google Fiber Phone
#70I 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 ki…
> $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.