Google Fi, Google's Phone Service, Briefly Goes Silent

Mobile customers of the service connecting Wi-Fi calls through partner carriers lost communications for about an hour

Google's mobile phone service, called Google Fi, went down for about an hour on Monday afternoon, leaving many cellular customers unable to make or receive calls.

Users of the subscription wireless communications service noticed problems with inbound and outbound calls around 2:30 PT Eastern on Monday, and were quick to express their irritation on Twitter and as comments on the Google Fi help page.

A Google employee, Kelly, wrote on the Google Fi help page that Google was aware of the problems, and later, at around 3:30 PT, that they had been resolved.

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While Google Fi is a Google service that works on devices certified by Google, it relies on three partner network providers: Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular.

The service is supposed to connect customers through data networks to the fastest of those carriers, dependent on where they are.

It was not clear by Monday afternoon if the failure was on the part of Google technology or a network provider. Some users said they could only make calls to other Google Fi numbers during the outage.

On the help page, Kelly suggested installation of the Google Hangouts dialer as a workaround.