There's someone very high up at Google who believes that Google can disrupt telephony. Fi and the lifeline of Voice are proof of this.

The fact that this project got refunded is also a tell that Google finds value in Voice (maybe). The question I'd ask is what value is it that they see? A couple of thoughts:

* Move voice users out of Hangouts to reduce users of the monolith.

* Test the current user bases' interest in updates - maybe there's something bigger brewing and this update is an experiment to learn about user habits.

* Create a pipeline program to covert users to Fi.

* Release work done over the holiday vacation that was cheap enough / good enough to release.