Goodbye Home Phone, Hey Google – Telstra enables inbound calls to your Google Home Devices

This may seem like a simple thing, but its actually huge. This is a rethink of telecommunications in your home. Your Google Assistant can now be your phone, for incoming and outgoing calls.

Telstra announced this week a little something I’ve been tinkering with for a few weeks once keen eyed reader Rob noticed it was available.

Available to Telstra post-paid mobile customers who have a Google Assistant, it’s all enabled in Google’s “Home” app.

Simply open the app, and go to Settings. Then Voice and Video Calls. Next choose Mobile Calls, then select Telstra, and Manage.

This will take you to some Telstra pages, where you enter your number, verify the number then activate Inbound Calling. Next Save.

You get to choose which Google Home Devices will ring, perhaps just the kitchen, perhaps all of them.

Now critically, this means anyone calling your mobile will call your home speakers. So think about how you want that to work.

With inbound and outbound calls, this is a huge blow to Home Phone lines frankly.

In our home, we were just working out the process of adding a VOIP line to our NBN – we wanted a handset the kids could use if they came home and were alone needing to talk to us.

Not necessary. Now, the kids can just say “Hey Google” and then “call” and give the number – given they know our numbers, it’s easy.

And, I’ve tested it, you can call the mobile number of the linked account, it’s a bit inception and matrix, but it works.

Telstra’s Paul Totton told EFTM “We know the addition of inbound call answering will be just as useful and convenient as the outbound feature, and with hundreds of ‘Triple Zero’ emergency calls made since we launched, it proves how valuable clever and connected devices in the home can be in situations like that,”.

“We’re currently the only telco in Australia to partner with Google in bringing this clever and new way to connect. It’s yet another part of our commitment to provide the best network and best technology to help everyone to thrive.”

Great stuff, now you can keep in touch with people via a phone number, but not ever need a phone – go think about that for a minute.

Perhaps ideal if you’ve got elderly relatives – they can just speak and make a call.

Now, you can call them, and they can answer with a touch of a touchscreen or by asking Google to Answer.