Google Voice

Google Voice briefly went down today with outgoing calls failing

Abner Li | Jul 6 2022 - 6:03 pm PT

If you were unable to place an outgoing call with Google Voice this afternoon, that was due to a problem “affecting a majority of users.”

Update 7/6: Google has published more details about the problem:

Affected Services and Features:
Google Voice – Calling feature affected
Regions/Zones: Global
Description:
Google Voice experienced failures in completing voice calls for all users. Failures lasted for 55 minutes starting at 6 July 2022 16:12 US/Pacific. From preliminary analysis, the root cause of the issue was identified as a change deployed to route specific type of VOIP calls which caused failure to route all voice calls. The issue was mitigated on 6 July 2022 17:07 US/Pacific after rolling back the identified change.
Customer Impact:
Users experienced failures for voice calls incoming and outgoing from Google Voice. Calls made by redialing also failed to complete.

From around 4:12 p.m. to 5:04 p.m. PT, “Customers impacted by this issue may experience calls made through Google Voice to fail.” Specifically, those making outgoing calls heard a “number is not in service” message.

However, Google says SMS/MMS messaging was not affected and that lines up with our testing. At 5:27 p.m., the company reported that:

The problem with Google Voice has been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

The free version is only meant for the US, but it’s also available as a paid addition to Google Workspace in several countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Austria, and Belgium.

Voice can be customized to fit your day-to-day workflow. Number assignment, porting, and billing are neatly consolidated in the familiar Google Workspace Admin console.
Voice uses Google’s AI to save you time by blocking spam calls and transcribing voicemails to text automatically. Integrations with Google Meet and Calendar keep the focus on what’s important.
Voice can be deployed instantly — and globally — from anywhere, with less administrative work.

Besides giving employees a work number that can be accessed across Android, iOS, and the web, it can be used in sales floors with multi-level auto attendants and ring groups. This version is also integrated in Gmail’s side panel. Besides today’s outage, Google’s VOiP service rarely goes offline in such a prominent manner.