With Google’s Fi MVNO launching as a limited invite program in the last couple weeks, the first wave of users have been reporting their progress receiving invites to the service, and while most of the reports have been initially positive, one report in particular concerns current Google Voice users and may be bad news if one heavily relies on any of Google Voice’s many features.
According to an explanation on the support page for Google Fi regarding Google Voice:
Project Fi offers many of the same features that you enjoy with Google Voice, like voicemail transcriptions. When you activate Project Fi service, these features will be provided by Project Fi, and Google Voice will be discontinued on your Google Account.
Features that aren’t available on Project Fi:
You can’t make or receive calls or access voicemail using Google Talk, Google Voice apps, or Obihai devices.
You won’t be able to send or receive text messages or access voicemails on the web; texts and voicemail history will not be saved to Google Voice. Tip: If you’d still like to use these features, try using Hangouts with Project Fi. If you’ve already turned on Google Voice text messages and voicemails in Hangouts, they’ll continue to only be available in Hangouts.
Call history is not backed up to Google Voice. You can see your call history on your phone through the Phone app.
These Google Voice settings aren’t available:spam filtering, call recording, call switch, conference calling on the fly, caller ID (incoming), and outgoing caller ID (anonymous Caller ID).
As part of signing up for Project Fi, Google Voice apps and the website won’t be available.
With these changes needed for Project Fi, it looks like Google is attempting to push Google Voice aside for Project Fi, rather than merging it completely for future Project Fi users, though that may be a function of Google Voice’s roots as a POTS-based service under GrandCentral and Google’s previous attempts to turn Voice into a VoIP service through Hangouts have proven half-baked, at best.
