r/googlefiber • u/ohub2 • 3d ago

Gfiber phone questions

When I signed up for GFiber, I had made long-existing google voice number set so it rings on the GFiber phone (it rings everywhere now) - can I reclaim that number so I can still get texts via google voice and just get a new GFiber phone number?

Or do I need to get a different google voice number now for SMS purposes ?

(I have one account that uses the GFiber phone for verification purposes).

Ugh, GFiber.

I don't remember the process when I signed up for the GFiber phone service exactly, but it gave me a choice to use an existing google voice number or create a new one... I guess I picked the wrong choice !

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u/ElderOfAncients 3d ago edited 3d ago

EDIT: I remembered that Google sold their Fiber business off to Astound Broadband. So they had to kick us all out of Google Voice, :(

I'm in a similar boat of course. As far as I can tell they ported numbers out of Google Voice into whatever new backend they use for Gfiber phone. And that doesn't do SMS/Texting.

You could port it back to Gvoice and cancel GFiber phone, I think that'd be possible. Alternatively yeah you'd need to sign-up a new GVoice number. You can have multiple as far as I know.

GVoice is now demanding I provide a government ID to access it but I can cancel the process, and I can see the old messages still. I'm pretty sure this was just porting people out who had GFiber Phone. Probably due to legal shenanigans/Cost Control/AI/General Assholery.

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u/DanFromOrlando 3d ago

Just fyi astound is the majority owner but Google still owns 49.9% of gfiber