Using Google Voice for your apartment buzzer

A free number that rings your phone and your roommate's phone is exactly the shape of the problem, so Google Voice is a reasonable thing to look at.

Where it fails, it fails at the last step, which is the worst place for it: the door.

What Google Voice gets right

The appeal is real. Google’s help centre says you can link up to six numbers, and that calls to your Google Voice number also ring on your linked numbers. The basic personal plan is free, and the number is one the lobby panel can dial like any other.

None of that helps if the door does not open. A number that rings four phones but cannot release the door gets everyone to the phone to watch a courier leave. The other ways to get more than one phone ringing.

The three things that get in the way

1. Availability outside the United States

Google’s page on Google Voice subscription types says the basic personal plan, and the standalone Voice Starter and Voice Standard plans, are only available in the US. Workspace business plans are offered in more countries, but that is a business product with its own costs.

A US number in a Canadian building has a second problem: many building lines only dial local numbers, so a US number may never connect. Why local matters.

2. Call screening intercepts the building

Google says that with screening on, callers whose number is not in your Google Contacts are asked to say their name before being connected, and you then press 1 to accept or 2 for voicemail. A lobby panel cannot say its name, and the courier standing at it will not wait for the prompt.

Turn Screen calls off in the Google Voice settings under Calls, and add the building’s number to your contacts.

3. The door digit has to get through

Pressing 9 does not send a command. It plays a keypad tone into the call, and the lobby panel opens the door because it recognises that sound. The mechanism in detail.

With Google Voice, the call reaches your phone through Google’s service rather than straight from the panel, and the tone you press has to make the same trip back. Google’s help pages do not describe how keypad tones are handled on forwarded calls, so the only way to know is to test with your building’s panel.

How to test it properly

If you have a Google Voice number and want to try it, test in this order. It takes about fifteen minutes and saves you from finding out during a delivery.

1. Turn off call screening In Google Voice settings, under Calls, switch Screen calls off.
2. Call the Google Voice number from another phone and press 9 Answer on your linked phone, press 9, and listen on the calling phone. You should hear the tone clearly. If you hear nothing, stop here.
3. Ask the building to update the directory Give them your unit and the Google Voice number.
4. Test from the lobby, more than once, on different days Once is not a test. You want to know before a courier does.
5. Test with the phones locked and in your pocket Different from testing with the app open, and closer to how it will be used.

When to stop trying

If the door does not open on repeated lobby tests, a settings change is unlikely to fix it, because the tone path is not something the Google Voice settings expose.

At that point the options are a landline that forwards, a VoIP line with a ring group, or a number built for this. BuzzMeBro is the last of those: a local number for your apartment that rings up to 4 phones at once, with a door-digit fallback built into the setup test, for $9.99 a month. The full comparison of options.