A series of leaked emails in January first uncovered Google Fiber's plans to move into phone service. But now the decision is official: Fiber Phone will roll out gradually across all of the company's existing markets. The company declined to name the initial launch markets, saying those details will come later.

The service comes with a little black box that sits beside your home phone. It has both ethernet and phone jacks, and will work with most handsets except for old rotary phones, according to Kelly Mason, a company spokesperson.

Google Fiber's effort to draw in phone customers highlights how the company is becoming more like traditional service providers even as many telecom companies are looking to become more like Internet content firms. Even providers of cellphone service have been shifting their focus away from voice and toward the more lucrative provision of mobile data. Reports this week suggest T-Mobile may soon unveil new phone plan options that eliminate voice service entirely to give you a bigger bucket of data.

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Fiber Phone fits within these trends in that it would help customers add some cloud-based functionality to their home phones. But it's not immediately clear why consumers would pick Fiber Phone over Google Voice. The two services share many of the same features, but Fiber Phone carries a subscription cost and requires an at-home installation that you don't need with Google Voice. In this respect, Google Voice might be considered a "better" service.

Fiber Phone could be appealing to those who currently buy their Internet and television from Google Fiber, but still have their landline phone tied to another provider, such as Verizon. Signing up for Fiber Phone would allow those Americans to eliminate one more bill from their lives and consolidate their services into a double- or triple-play deal with Google Fiber.

But federal statistics show Americans are largely moving away from landline service anyway, embracing a cellphone-only approach. Forty percent of U.S. adults now use their cellphones exclusively.