Google, the technology giant born out of the Internet age, rolled out a landline telephone service on Tuesday in some U.S. cities.
The service, known as Fiber Phone, offers basic landline features including call waiting, caller identification, unlimited local and nationwide calling and 911 services at a price of 10 U.S. dollars per month.
As part of the company's Google Fiber operation, it works with phone, tablet and laptop computer and brings subscribers new features such as transcribing voice mails and delivering them as text messages or email.
In direct completion against local telecommunications carriers and Internet service providers, or ISPs, the cloud-based service is currently available in three U.S. cities where Google Fiber is deployed, namely Austin, Kansas City and Provo, and is expected to expand to Salt Lake City, Nashville, Atlanta, Charlotte and Raleigh-Durham.
Two more cities, Louisville and Huntsville, are listed as candidates.
The landline service comes along with Google Fiber's ultra-fast Internet access.
With cloud, wrote Google Fiber product manager John Shriver-Blake in a blog post, "it can ring your landline when you're home, or your mobile device when you're on-the-go."
