Maybe bigger news is that they now officially support (in "beta") iPhones, Samsung's S line, and many other handsets.
If you use a non-Fi native device it won't support Sprint (T-Mobile only) and fast switching from WiFi to cellular is disabled.
It might have limitations but at least it is officially supported. People have already been using non-supported devices on Fi with these same limitations, it was just technically forbidden.
Fi really is a great network, I doubt it would ever happen but I still hope that cost per GB might fall a little in time. I am pleased they added the data ceiling/unlimited after 6 GB.
FWIW, I successfully used my unofficially supported Galaxy S9 in India. I did hit one snag, which is that I had bought the phone prior to going on the trip and hadn't installed the Project Fi app yet which meant I couldn't connect to any network after landing. Once I got on wifi and installed the app, I had 4G during my entire stay even in the most rural areas on overnight trains and no issues.
Though had I bothered to go through the whole passport photo/scan 24hr submission process for Airtel it would have been way cheaper.
When I brought my Samsung S7 with a Fi data sim to Korea, it worked fine. When I brought it to Japan, nothing. My Nexus 5X worked great in both places.
I believe that's because there US S7 doesn't have the LTE receiver for the data band used in Japan, whereas the 5X does and not the issue of the Fi SIM. I bet if you got an S7 from Japan it would have worked fine
I'm not sure if it would have been better on a supported phone, but in the past year I've had good coverage with an iPhone SE on Fi in New Zealand, Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.
No, it shouldn't, and I hope Google isn't lazy enough to add an unnecessary limitation. T-Mobile's very similar roaming (which Google's seems to be based off of) works fine with unlocked non-T-Mobile branded phones.
More expensive for high data users, but less expensive for low data users. Flexibility is really king here, if 9 months of the year you use < 1 GB/month ($30/month) but want the option to have much more (e.g. emergency) and international travel, full speed hotspot, then it may be for you.
As to "why is the US/Canada so expensive?" Urban areas subsidies rural cellular. The US is hugely populated on the East and West coasts and a cellphone network that only targeted those population centers would be as cheap or even cheaper than Europe. But most networks are deploying LTE to middle-America where there are few people, and most cellular infrastructure loses money.
Networks have tried doing cellphone networks that only work within New York State, California, or Texas for example but people want the hypothetical ability to travel on the open road whenever and wherever they want.
"Roaming" used to be a thing (I don't think I've seen domestic roaming in years). It essentially solved this problem, anything inside your typical geographic range was included at normal price, but you paid a hefty surcharge when roaming in rural areas. The problem was, you could accidentally or even intentionally travel outside of your network and get charged exorbitant roaming fees. It was really easy to accidentally rack up a huge bill and so many consumers were against it despite it being a "fair" solution, from an economic sense.
Once you hit 6gb, you stop paying till you hit 15gb. After that, you're rate limited, or you can call up Fi support and have them put you at full speed and charge the usual $10/gb
That cap's been there for a while. IIRC, it was implemented some months after T-Mobile started the "race to unlimited data"... was that the winter before last? Speaking of the U.S. marketplace. I never read an official explanation, but my assumption/understanding was that this was Fi's response to remain competitive with other carriers' "unlimited" plans.
What concerns me is the throttling at/after 15 GB. Other carriers have this, too, but it is supposedly "dependent on local load/conditions", and comments have led me to understand that, for some if not many people, they don't encounter the slowdown much in practice.
Whereas, being an MVNO and also perhaps having better software, Fi might be more strict and aggressive with the throttling? I don't know.
You only play for what you use. This rewards anyone who mainly stays on wifi. My bill is roughly ~$35 a month with them while everyone I know has bills of 70-120. If you sign up for 2GB but use 1.1GB you only pay $11.
> A T-mobile family plan with unlimited data (throttled after 2GB) comes out to ~$25/month.
This may be a legacy plan; the only thing they seem to currently offer is $40/line/month for 4 lines ($70/month for one), but throttled at 50GB/month (not clear if this is by line or account), not 2GB/month.
It's a little cheaper than Fi list price at the level Bill Protection (essentially, unlimited with 15GB/line throttling threshold) kicks in ($160/4 lines with TMo vs $205 for Fi). But Fi does refund if you use less than 14 GB total, which may reduce the effective price depending on usage pattern.
User Agent sniffing, traffic analysis, port sniffing and new phones might even tell them. The carriers are already doing a lot of load balancing among all the devices attached to their network. It wouldn’t be too hard to detect.
Years ago AT&T sent me text right when I connected to my hotspot. I can’t see the tethering data use on AT&Ts dashboard but I can see usage per line.
Yeah moving from the USA to UK, one of the things I definitely don't miss is us telecom pricing. I just signed up for a new plan here for 20 GBP per month that gives me 15GB of data and free call/text/data roaming in US, Canada, Australia, etc..
I pay less money for access to more data in America then my American family does.
That's not a far less expensive plan per GB though.
20 GBP is about $25 USD. T Mobile US is offering 50GB LTE at $70 per month. Adjusting your 15GB to that nets you $83 per month. T Mobile also offers free call/text/data roaming as well to dozens of other countries as part of the plan.
Assuming Germany is on the list, that would still be a lot better than the 4GB cap + 5Eur per extra GB we have here. But to replace my landline I really need unlimited. Except, I don't really need to loose the landline other than to save for the expensive mobile contracts, and that only for streams.
It's really amazing. Only countries I've ever visited without Fi support were Iran and Ethiopia. Even in Iraq and Myanmar, Fi worked great. Your traffic also automatically goes through Fi's VPN, which unlike ExpressVPN and most other big commercial ones, has never in my experience been blocked by China.
I got a new phone less than a month ago, and this was a reason I got an android one phone. I can just use my phone (and unrelated, Uber) when I go to India (or anywhere else so far).
I had few problems in Argentina and Uruguay (only countries I've been to since I got it, but been to several times). In the norhern part of Argentina (Iguazu) I had poor coverage where my girlfriend had (Argentinian service provider) great coverage. I think Fi was trying to decide if I was in Brazil or Argentina and that was messing me up. In Buenos Aires (where I spent most of my time), reception was good except for around some buildings (assuming line-of-sight issues). In Uruguay I never had any problems.
The only other issues were a lag between landing and service beginning. Took over half an hour on one trip, and over an hour on another. But this year I didn't have that lag, took maybe 5 minutes from when I turned on the phone after landing to it working.
Service speed was always good.
NB: I have a Nexus 5X. Some of the reception issues may have just been reception issues with that device compared to others, I don't know.
Great in my experience (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France, UK, Canada, Thailand, South Korea). I found it to always be fast with no obvious throttling, and coverage is often better overseas than at home.
* the $10/GB quote is pay as you go - unused data does not magically expire at the end of the billing cycle. While one can probably find a better promotional deal with a US carrier, those unclaimed gigabytes are unlikely to "roll over" to the next month.
* the rate is valid for any of Fi's international partners across 170 countries. Other US operators are likely to hit the user with roaming charges for voice + data
Also worth noting: once you cross 6GB, they stop billing. Basically, your bill is capped at $80 + taxes, so that one month that you end up using 250 GB doesn't cost you $2500, it costs $80.
At the top end (6 group members) the max per user cost (if splitting evenly and not proportioned based on individual usage) is $50, compared to $80 for one user.
This is a bit misleading. They throttle you to 256kbps after 15GB, but give you the option to lift the limit by paying $10/GB for the data you use past 15GB in a given cycle.
It's literally impossible to reach 250GB without paying extra. After being throttled the most you'd be able to download is 82.94GB, assuming you were downloading things non-stop at the maximum speed for 30 days.
On the higher range, but if you consider that it is global LTE data, it is an amazing deal, particularly if you use more than 6GB/month.
Being able to land or drive into a country and have LTE working without having to do anything is amazing, especially when going through several countries.
We pay a lot in the US but it sure doesn't sound cheap to me. I must be misunderstanding something.
I pay, I think, $40/mo for 6GB with no phones and then $25/line to add unlocked phones. so I guess $90/6GB? I'm FAR from being on the cheapest plan in the world, but Google's plan starts at $35 for the same 2 lines, with NO data, then $10/GB?
So this groundbreaking new plan would be $5 more than I pay, and I ALREADY am sure I'm overpaying because I don't shop around.
Oh, wait, 'free' (throttled?) after 6GB. That's where the 'deal' comes in. Still, 6GB is about right for us. I'm sure if I shopped around I could do better, but last time ATT gave me a 'deal' they lied to me about saving my BYOD pricing and suddenly I was paying $40 per line for phones I paid $700+ for.
Verizon prepaid is also not a bad deal. 8GB for $50/month. You can get $5/mo off if you auto pay and $15 off for multi-line. It's going to be very hard for Fi to be anything other than a niche provider unless they improve their data pricing.
Wow. I've got 8GB high speed 4G for £30, and I had the phone thrown in for free (Pixel 2)! Incredible how data varies so much in price from country to country.
I live in France, I'm subscribed to the most expensive operator (Orange), and even then I get unlimited call/text and 10 Gigabytes of data (in 4G) for less than 25 € per month (~roughly 28 dollars).
These prices look like a joke to me, but it might be a US thing.
France prices are only due to Free mobile. Before they came up with their 20€ a month plan with unlimited everything, the other operators mobile plans had prices similar to the US, 60 to 80 € a month for unlimited everything.
There was rumors of free mobile acquiring T-Mobile sometime last year, that would have been awesome for US consumers...
That same 20€/mo plan gives 25GB of data to use abroad, which makes project fi a less interesting option in France.
While you’re right that Free Mobile indeed had a big impact on prices in France, I’m pretty sure prices before Free were closer to 30-50 € euro a month and not 60-80.
With that said, data usage habits also did change between 2012 and now. I was happy with 500 Mo/month back in 2011. I would have trouble living with that now.
I mean, I think you could say the same about practically anywhere in Europe. Irish mobile prices were horrendous until Three showed up in the early noughties, say. But that's the past.
US has one of the worst mobile data in the world. I remember having to pay around $30 for ~3 - 5 GB of mobile data the last time I visited US. Worst of all the connection speed was pathetic. And it was not even 4G. When I visited Thailand recently I got unlimited 6 mbps 4G mobile data for a week for around 8 dollars. India on the other hand have carriers offering 4G data at around $0.08 per GB. US definitely have to step up its mobile data game.
You should be getting LTE and decent connection speeds in most metro areas of the US. What carrier were you using, and what part of the country were you in?
That's a pretty big travel area, and T-Mobile's core network doesn't work well outside urban centers. (Rural coverage has historically been better on Verizon.)
T-Mobile's Extended Range network (LTE Band 12) has substantially improved their rural coverage lately, but is only supported on the US version of major cell phones. If your phone was purchased outside the US/Canada, it probably didn't have Band 12 support. There's a table here (the specific model number is important, in this case): http://www.spectrumgateway.com/compatible-phones
If you weren't picking up LTE, that also suggests to me you might have been having issues related to Band 12.
But outside that, near any mid-sized population centers (where Band 12 isn't needed), you should've had a fast signal. Especially in California. I just ran a speed test on my phone, running T-Mobile in suburban California, and got 90 Mbps down / 40 Mbps up. That's faster than my home internet connection.
I was on T-Mobile too with a EU phone. If you are using a EU phone, there is compatibility problems with the T-Mobile network. Unfortunately, I only learned about that from my friends after I bought your safe offer. The sales person didn't warn me in advance.
We’re you using a local sim or or international plan? International plan users get kinda screwed with speeds. Was just in France with T-Mobile and service was horrible there too.
Yeah, Canadian cell plans were a shock coming from the UK. I'm paying 50$ for 5GB and unlimited calls/texts with Freedom, but that only works for me as I spend most of my time in Vancouver.
Its fairly on the expensive side. The nice part is they prorate the cost to your actual usage. If you have variable data rates such as months you travel and months you're mostly on wifi, its fine.
I end up spending ~$35-40/mo on average with peace of mind of unlimited data. The charge also caps out at 6GB I think so the max bill is $80 or something like that.
I essentially never use data. I haven't used more than 50mb in years because I am always within wifi range or only using my phones for SMS and phonecalls.
I don't know why cellphone service is so expensive in the US, but it seems difficult to find anything cheaper than $20 a month. Typical plans here for a single user and ~10gb of data is going to be $40-$60 a month.
>I don't know why cellphone service is so expensive in the US,
I suspect size has a lot to do with it. The US is the 3rd largest country in the world. Sure, Canada is bigger but at almost 1/10th the people and I suspect the country has far less coverage than the US.
Just look at coverage maps for the US then keep in mind how many square miles you're looking at and you can easily think "yeah, that can be expensive".
Yeah, they're pocketing a lot of profit and mostly relying on government funding to expand their networks but still, I just don't think we could go as cheap as laces like India.
The way the FCC handles spectrum also doesn't help.
It's pretty standard. Building a wireless network in the US is VERY expensive, between FCC spectrum auctions, the vast amount of rural areas, and the fact that each individual municipality can make building a tower a huge pain with different regulations it's surprising cell phone plans are as cheap as they are.
No, it's not reasonable. T Mobile is at $70 for 50gb, $1.4 per (at 50gb they change your priority; on the surface they claim unlimited data of course).
To make proper comparisons on prices paid between countries, you need to consider income levels in the country in question, not just the price unto itself.
I think that calculation omits a critical number: how much data you actually use. If you pay for 50GB but only use 5GB, your price per GB is effectively 10x. With Fi you will never pay for more than 10 / GB used, but you will pay less if you exceed 6GB in a month.
Being from India, I confirm this. Broadband plans cost around that. Mobile 4G plans are around 6$ per month for 1.5GB per day of usage. Though the speeds are more like 3G.
Speed depends upon the place you live. I used to get around 30 - 35 Mbps while I visited Tamil Nadu. On the other hand I hardly gets 1 Mbps speed in my home town.
Its expensive but has some benefits that other carriers dont.
Works in 100+ countries for that price. I have Fi but live in Canada and travel and work in the US. Canadian phone plans are even more expensive and US roaming can add $30+ a month to a plan. Fi gives me $10/GB in Canada where I use very little data (work from home so always on wifi) and then $10/GB in the US without extra roaming options.
There is a data bill cap at $60 or 6GB of data. Once you hit $60 you still get full speed data up to 15GB then it throttles down.
$10/GB is great for variable data use. Some months I use 500MB so the bill is cheap. Other months I hit 4GB, bill is more but then I dont have to pay for data I am not using.
No charge data only SIM cards. I have three extra SIM cards that cost me nothing. One for an LTE hotspot, one for my wifes iPhone while in the US and a third that I will use for a backup LTE connection. They cost me nothing but the data used.
Anyone looked into potential privacy implications?
I understand my current carrier can potentially deduce things about my habits in the unlikely event that they were so inclined, but Alphabet et al seem to make a not insignificant portion of their profit from data gathering - that is, they don't need to be interesting in me particularly to sell data about me to those that are (whether for benign ad targeting or something more nefarious)
I don't mean to seem paranoid, but with the current hype around Google's tumultuous relationship with "Don't be evil", I'm not sure I want them having that data on me too.
The thing about Google is that they gather data and then sell an interface to that data, instead of selling the data outright.
Pretty much every major carrier is already selling your location information outright to third party aggregators. They push the consent requirement to the third party aggregators under essentially what amounts to a pinky promise.
I use T-Mobile and their Privacy settings did not prevent my data being sold to these services, at least around the time that vulnerability in of one of the 3rd party aggregators was discovered. Even before the exploit, demo of that system demonstrated that location of my phone was available using just the phone number. It was accurate to within a few block radius for me, using tower data (unblockable) rather than some GPS app on a phone that could potentially be prevented. The exploit demonstrated that it was available with no consent, and that consent requirement was just a form-fill for anyone the third party aggregator in turn sold the access to (so essentially they also pass on the consent requirement.. nobody actually enforces it anywhere).
Google wasn't listed as one of the carriers selling location data at the time, but they do not really have their own network, it is essentially a piggyback on others, so I'm not sure how that would work. But I assume it would require their active support.
I think that given the scrutiny about data that Google is usually given, and the incentive that drives them to act as a gatekeeper to data instead of an outright seller, they would be more reluctant to share this than the mobile carriers who already do so. Carriers are under less scrutiny, and users have limited alternatives. And if you're already using Google Maps, Google likely has more accurate location data on you already (correlating GPS and wifi instead of triangulation of cellular towers).
Surprisingly, a Google Voice front to your cell phone offers more privacy than your cell phone alone, as it eliminates the need to share your mobile number directly and have it location tracked. It has made me think more about using Google Fi, to be honest.. Unfortunately I'd have to find some other public demo from one of these aggregators to see if they were sharing my location data like the other carriers. That last one from LocationSmart was removed from public view after the vulnerability was exposed, IIRC.
Other discussions earlier this year:
US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data
> I understand my current carrier can potentially deduce things about my habits in the unlikely event that they were so inclined
I worked for one carrier and part of our project was exporting (without names) location history to some external company which then provided segmentation into categories like "student", "stay at home", "working", "retired" based on how people move. The results were then reintegrated and used for marketing purposes.
So they absolutely can and they absolutely do that.
Google Fi is one of the best services that Google offers. I am trying to cut down on my Google dependence, but I don't see myself leaving Fi any time soon.
I would have used it but I'm too attached to my "real" cell # and my GVoice # as separate numbers. I give them out to different people for different purposes.
Agreed. My Google Voice number is my default for handing out, and I reserve my real # for important things. I just wish you could block numbers using Google Voice.
Switching your cell number to Google Fi doesn't preclude using Google Voice. They're unrelated services, and you can transfer your existing cell number to Fi.
"Whichever option you choose, once you activate Google Fi service on your phone, you’ll no longer have Google Voice on the Google Account you use with Google Fi. "
It does, actually. When you sign up for Fi, you have to use your Google Voice number or lose it. The only way to keep both would be to transfer your normal # to a VoIP service that forwards to your Voice (now Fi) number.
Same. After moving all my email stuff onto Protonmail, I’m at the point where I may and would like to delete my entire Google account but it’s tied with Fi. I’ve been using Fi with my iPhone SE for close to three years now and it’s been a smooth ride.
It would be great if Apple could create their own version of Google Fi, optimized for iOS devices and, more importantly, privacy. This would also be cool for international use, where using my phone feels like playing Russian roulette. Is my Wi-Fi call billed at normal data rate? Am I being billed at $1/minute? Is my call even going over Wi-Fi? If Apple controlled the network, they could just say "This is a free call" on the call screen, or "This call is $0.20/minute." And even better, with flaky international Wi-Fi, the call could be locked into the initial rate even if it hops over to a cell tower if/when the Wi-Fi fails. All I want in a carrier is rock-solid predictability and reliability and for me to never think about it ever again. Google Fi comes really close to this, but it's still not ideal for those using Apple products.
I want to jump to Fi but is just super expensive for families. I have 4 lines.
With Mint I can get unlimited talk, text and 2GB/per line for $15. So a family of 4 = $60.
With Fi it would be $145. The difference is more than double.
ATT offers 4 lines for $120 with 3GB per line.
I remember when it was launched the price advantage was big. But since then the carriers came down and Fi did not (barring that $15 vs $20 per extra line thing)
The only advantage I see is the use of 3 networks(for those who live in places with bad coverage).
It simply isn't for high data usage no matter how you slice it.
You're calculating the prices based on hitting the data ceiling on Fi every month, if you are hitting the ceiling that often then you shouldn't be on Fi. T-Mobile's family offering is likely better value for true unlimited.
In general I agree Fi isn't great for families, because kids often consume a ton of data. It might be good for a spouses if both parties don't use much data.
Actually, they have discounted rate for additional users:
Does Google Fi offer plans for groups or families?
Yes. If you’re new to Google Fi, you can set up a group plan during your checkout process. Just have the intended plan owner click “Join Fi” to get started.
Just like an individual plan, each month you’ll pay $20 for unlimited talk and text, then add $15 for each additional person. Data costs the same at $10 for each GB used.
If you’re already a part of Google Fi you can invite people to your plan here. You can have up to six people, including the group owner, in a group.
If you're happy with your phone service in the US, and you're a moderate or large data user, Google Fi is not likely to be a great deal for you. It's in the price ballpark of other carriers, but it's not cheap.
For me, the four major wins for Fi are:
1. It's multi-carrier.
It seamlessly switches to whichever carrier has the best signal. It also seamlessly switches to VoIP over wifi when in range.
You can start a phone call on your work wifi, walk to a coffee shop, and use their wifi, walk home and use your wifi, and while you're walking, it'll hop between cell carriers to get the best signal. While my scenario is a bit artificial, it's impressive.
The big win here is that you get a strong signal in places where other carriers fail. I had Sprint in Manhattan, and all you need to do to lose signal is walk next to a tall building. I'd get 5 bars outside my apartment and 2 bars inside. With Fi, I have a great signal everywhere.
2. You only pay for what you use.
I'm not a huge data user. I never stream media on my phone, and my day-to-day use consists of reading the news and some light Facebook browsing.
If you don't use any data, your bill is $20/month. A typical bill for me is about $40/mo, which is about half the price I'd pay with any other major carrier.
Sometimes I need more, and having the option is nice. When I was commuting a lot, I'd tether, and use 6-12GB/mo. Since the 6-15GB window is "free", the bill would max out at $80/mo, which is comparable to other providers for similar usage. But instead of paying $80/mo all the time, I only pay that much when I need it. Once, I went over 15GB. The throttling was terribly (256KB), but I was also able to opt-in and pay $10/GB beyond that. I went up to 20GB full-bandwidth for the month, and my bill was $130, but required no commitment. Other providers don't even offer the option.
3. There's no commitment. If you own the phone, it's pay-as-you-go. You don't have to commit to a full-year plan.
4. The data rate applies internationally.
I travel enough that paying $10/mo for data in other countries is a godsend. I used to have to buy local SIMs and pay outrageous rates for data in other countries.
I get that its multi-carrier, but two of its 3 carriers are merging, and the 3rd carrier isn't nationwide (they have great coverage in some areas, and use 'partners' in other regions).. Really curious how the T-Mobile Sprint Merger will affect Fi.
What are the downsides to using an MVNO such as Google Fi? As far as I'm aware, carriers are prone to de-prioritizing MVNO traffic to favor their own customers during periods of high congestion or emergency, but I don't know if all MVNO traffic is treated equally, or if certain MVNO carriers are de-prioritized because they pay less for "budget/excess capacity" network use.
I had trouble laat year in a couple of remote places using Google Fi. They use Sprint and T-Mobile towers. I believe e.g. if you have a contract with Sprint, you can roam on Verizon's towers. However, I was visiting an area (central NC) and I had zero service the whole time, even in town. I switched back to Verizon.
Google Fi also automatically connects you to known WiFi spots and sends your data over their VPN. The switching between antennas will kill your battery as well.
The reliability of the least reliable carrier can bring down the reliability average. Just yesterday I could not make any outgoing calls because of a Sprint outage. Luckily the Signal Spy app makes it easy to switch to another carrier.
It's nice in a way since if a carrier is having an outage, you can manually switch, but I like for stuff to just work.
This is compelling. I like the "pay as you go" model for data. I'm on an iPhone though and do enjoy visual voicemail - I wonder how much I would miss it? I also wonder what their beta status for iOS means and what their roadmap looks like.
It's cool to see this service graduate, and the addition of limited iPhone support. That said, this year I discovered Xfinity Mobile. We already have Comcast internet at home (which has actually worked quite well for us, despite Comcast's horrible customer service reputation).
Xfinity Mobile costs nothing for talk/text for up to 5 phones + $12 per GB of shared data (or $45 per "unlimited" data per phones). After taxes, my bill has been hovering between $14-26, because I don't use a ton of data on the go.
Oh, and they use Verizon as the underlying carrier, so the coverage has been good.
I love the promise of automatic carrier switching, but the reality is somewhat lacking -- you need special firmware, and anyway T-Mobile and Sprint seem to be merging.
I would love to consider a MVNO that actually supported roaming across carriers, using the normal stuff that's in phones already, as long as they had a reasonable data plan with some measured amount of high speed data, and unmetered low speed after that. I could live with always low speed data too, I just want better coverage than I can get with a single network.
The biggest part of this undoubtedly has to be the ability to use phones outside the Nexus/Pixel lines.
I've been a Project Fi customer for a few years now and love to wax poetic about it, but always have to add the caveat of "oh, but you can't use your current phone.". Which is a bigger deal when many of my friends are using iPhones and would never consider switching to Android.
And it's still a steaming pile. I've been a Fi user since September of 2015 and I've had annoyance after annoyance.
- MMS and SMS would send and the receipients would get multiple copies. In one instance someone got more than a dozen instances of a photo I sent
- MMS and SMS would fail to show up regularly for a month
- SMS showed up a full week after the fact in one instance
- Visual voicemail failed to retrieve messages for the better part of a year once
- It took them way too long to get 2fa SMS messages to actually deliver
- People have had multiple years of issues with their phone not ringing, only ringing on hangouts on their computer, not hearing a ring when they call someone
- People have had multiple years of people regularly being unable to hear them, people saying they sound extremely quiet, being unable to hear people, having awesome signal strength but breaking up terribly for the other person
- Piss poor network switching over multiple years, for a solid 2 years you'd have edge and it wouldn't switch to the other one then two networks that had great signal 4g where you were
- Unexplained mystery data usage for multiple people over multiple years
- Terrible customer service for many when something is wrong
- In multiple instances they allowed existing users numbers to be taken by other people
- Countless instances of the 'hidden' number showing up when texting or calling someone
Etc etc. The ONLY reason I'm still a subscriber is they still owe me $336.63 in referral credit from a contest over a year ago, I basically only pay taxes for my service.
Downvote away, you're either Google employees or dense. You are more than welcome to head over to /r/projectfi and see these problems posted day after day by hundreds (if not thousands of users) going back 3 years as well as all sorts of billing issues, number porting issues, trade-in issues, referral issues, warranty issues etc etc.
Similarly you can find issue after issue on their official forum.
They even screwed the pooch telling customers about the change today by sending the email to customers more than an hour after tweeting it and in the past when there have been critical issues with service, as in service down for thousands of subscribers, they've posted it on their obscure forum instead of emailing customers.
My wife and I are on Xfinity Mobile, which uses Verizon towers. We're on the $12/gig plan, while texts and minutes are free.
Our 3 kids are on Tello, which resells Sprint. They're on the 100 minutes, unlimited texts, 1GB of data plan for $10/month. With taxes, it's almost exactly $11.
Verizon seems to have coverage in remote areas where Sprint doesn't, though sometimes it's been true that Sprint has service and Verizon doesn't. It might be that if we were using Verizon service from Verizon itself instead of through a reseller we'd have service. Given that we pay about $65/month for 5 lines of service, which is what we were paying for 1 line from Verizon, I'm not anxious to test that out.
I've shown the kids how to adjust their phones to just use WiFi for app updates, etc. They're young enough that they're at school or home, not driving themselves around.
Additional GB are $4/month on Tello. They get 2G speed if they hit their 1GB limit, which means they get iMessages, email, etc.
If the non-supported phones are stuck on T-Mobile's network and don't support the seamless WiFi/Cell switching, what advantage is there to picking Fi over regular T-Mobile service? Price-wise Fi only wins if you use very little data.
> When you travel abroad in 210+ countries and destinations you will have unlimited data at up to 128kbps [...]. If you frequently travel internationally and require a higher speed you can add T-Mobile One Plus™ and get up to 256kbps speeds abroad for $15/mo.
For full disclosure their "One Plus" offering does include other things:
- HD streaming.
- 20GB of 4G LTE mobile hotspot data.
- Unlimited in-flight Wi-Fi.
- Voicemail to Text.
So you can debate if Fi (international 4G) or T-Mobile w/One Plus (in-flight Wi-Fi) is superior for international travel.
Even just for US, coverage is great and rarely you will have any issues with reception.
When you travel internationally, it is fantastic experience and often you get fantastic speeds. My experience is with Europe and it was great.
While it might sound that it can be expensive, overall you really have great experience and it adjusts to your usage. It is transparent and easy to look how much you used.
The only thing that I would love to have (and not excessively pay for it) would be some kind of deal on hotspot access. If I could get a data card through them for lte device that I would getter better deal then $10/GB, I think that would be awesome.
Overall my experience mirrors other positive experiences.
Fi is still way more expensive than t-mobile's prepaid plan at 10GB for $40 with free music streaming. At these price points it's not worth taking the risk of wifi not being available.
Not even in my wildest dream I have imagine that, India could have cheaper and faster internet than most of other countries. Now for 2 USD/month I'm using 3GB data per day at 4G speed.
It's not as simple as that. Owing to the larger populace that India has, the cost is being shared amongst consumers. The magic being that bandwidth is oversubscribed. As in say 20 users share the same resource, so if all 20 users are online they get only 5% of the promised bandwidth.
I've used more than 300GB in a day on my home internet connection, it doesn't seem outrageous to me that someone could use 1/100th of that on a mobile connection per day.
Not the OP. My parents in India don't have wired broadband. They only use mobile data. So when we do a FaceTime call, they easily consume about 1 GB (give or take a few MB as I didn't do any scientific measurement) in less than an hour.
After having service with Verizon, T-Mobile, and Google Fi, I can say I like Fi the best. I'm almost always on wifi, and when I'm not it's because I'm traveling. My monthly bill is about half what it was when I was on T-Mobile, and the coverage is much better (plus voice+SMS over wifi). It's definitely not for people who rely on LTE all day long, but if you're mostly going from home to work under a wifi cloud all day, with some traveling overseas a few times a year, it's perfect.
Canada has the most expensive plans in the first world and we don't have access to Google Fi yet. It's ridiculous how expensive it can be to have data here.
You CAN use Google Fi but you need to have a US address to get started. But it works great in Canada. Calls do cost 20 cents per minute while in Canada but the data is the same price at $10USD/GB.
There was a post on here (IIRC) about a month ago about someone who had family in the US, but his phone was always overseas. They killed the whole account.
The company moved into a new office for a few months that had terrible cell service inside the building. Everyone had to do phone calls outside. But having Fi meant I could do everything on wi-fi. I think it's only a matter of time before features like this become ubiquitous. Do we really need cellular networks if something like Starlink beams high speed internet to every corner of the planet?
I've been on Fi for ~2 years now, and while the network kinda sucks sometiems, and $10/GB can be expensive, keeping the Google Voice spam filtering/call filtering, and doing all my texting via Hangouts is amazing.
I'm sure sooner or later Google will fuck it up, and I'd honestly much rather have an iPhone these days, but for my current setup, its perfect.
You can use Google Voice/Hangout for all their features without Fi So is there an advantage to paying for Fi otherwise that I am missing? The cost for the amount of data I use would far outweigh any benefits I can see here unless there are features you get with Fi for Voice/Hangout that I don’t know about.
With Fi, you can still use hangouts for normal SMS, which they removed for non-Fi users last year (around the same time they removed merged conversations).
Right now, all my SMS/MMS go through hangouts, and then down to whatever devices I want, which is great since I can use hangouts on my work phone, from the computer, etc, and all my texts still come and go from the same phone number.
I use Tracfone because it is cheaper if I don't need unlimited talk/text. I probably average around $10/month on my Tracfone for everything, as my data usage is very light, and I only use about 100 minutes of voice. I'd use Google Fi when I'm traveling overseas, since it includes roaming, which is a killer feature.
I worry about Google spying on me, but I'm extremely pleased with Fi. It's followed me all over the world from the UK, France, Germany, China, and Singapore, as well as all over the USA in major cities and deserted areas as well.
Annnnd... it's really easy to integrate with Jolly Roger Phone Company which makes for some good laughs.
I have a LG Sport Watch which has a Sim card. Anyone know if this is now supported? I've never been able to get it to work because you need to register the Sim card on a device that works with Fi and my current devices are sim-less.
I've been on Fi for years and highly recommended it.
How did you register it? I was struggling with this, because I thought I needed a phone to register the SIM first (since you need to use the app, right?). Once you have it registered, you can swap the sim. Is that what you did, or a different method?
So from memory, project-fi support on phones was all blobbed up in google play services. No way to use the features on AOSP. Now that they also support iphones and other android phones, has it been merged into AOSP and/or some standard ?
10$/GB is way too expensive
Compare:
- ATT unlocked pay as you go you get 8GB with ROLLOVER for 40$ a month (autopay)
- TMobile for 40$ per month you get 10GB (not sure about rollover)
This service seems very niche and only for international travellers.
T-Mobile One is $70/mo with autopay for a single line. It goes down to $40/mo if you have 4 lines.
T-Mobile One is actually unlimited, though they say they will deprioritize your traffic if you use a lot of data. This is still better than some other vendors that start to actually throttle you down to 3G speeds. Also, T-Mobile's tethering is not throttled, unlike some other vendors (e.g. Verizon's "gounlimited").
Last I checked you could still get their cheaper "Simple Choice" prepaid plan for $40/mo, but that's very limited data-wise, something like 2 or 3GB.
It is nice for international travelers though. For ATT pay as you go, you get free Mexico and Canada traveling but they don't offer any reasonable rates outside of those two countries (it's all pay-per-minute/text/MB at exorbitant prices). Their postpaid plans have some slightly better options outside of the country but wouldn't be called great by any stretch of the means, in almost all cases you're better off just getting a local prepaid SIM.
In what country? For me switching to Fi saved money over Verizon although that was years ago and may be different now. Biggest draw is that you pay for what you use without stupid penalties, which is probably not true of your plan, and let's be honest 2GB/mo is not enough for anyone who leaves the house every day.
Fantastic! Can I use it with my Google Apps account yet? I've been forced to have my Fi account tied with my old gmail account for years, and I can't connect that account with my phone without getting tons of garbage emails.
Currently paying $140 on T-Mobile for 4 unlimited lines with unlimited international 3G roaming (good enough for maps and music) and other misc. benefits (half-off phones, free Netflix, unlimited in-flight wi-fi).
Is this just for Americans? The site doesn't seem to mention anything at all about availability, but the signup form just had "state" and not "country".
Yeah I just looked at the prices and was shocked at how expensive they are!
I am in [redacted] and my 50GB mobile data (unlimited calls and texts) is part of my €55/month home internet package (which includes 1Gbit fiber internet, land line and a TV box + package not that I care for that).
America has crazy expensive prices for mobile plans!
And Google launches another US-centric product without even thinking about the rest of the world. The lesson, of course, is that the rest of the world needs to get used to the idea that Google (and other bay area companies) are not designing for them, or consider them, and they should rather take care for themselves.
What is the Google Fi of France? Of Germany? Of India?
HN screams bloody murder when Google grabs location data without being clear about it. But I see nothing critical iin this thread (yet) of the idea of Google providing this service? So confused.
If Google grabs location data without clear warnings, explicit opt-ins, or an easily ability to opt-out that is immoral.
Contrast that with something like Fi where the fact it is a Google run cellphone network is front and center, so to sign up active consent is very much required.
People just want a choice. Nobody is forcing anyone to use Fi, but people feel like they cannot escape Google's privacy violations in other areas.
I disagree. Many consumers who will be interested in this service will not be educated enough about the relevant issues to give “active consent”.
That’s like saying, FB has told consumers it is using their data in exchange for the use of FB, so it’s open season on that data set.
As a community that understands many of the implications of Google having this relationship with consumers, in addition to those relationships made possible by Google’s other products, I would expect for HN readers to sound the alarm at least a little.
If Google has your transit info (maps + Waymo) and your email, and your browsing (chrome + cookies), and your financial (purchased through brokers and banks + wallet), and knowledge about your relationships (email and photo analysis), and lord knows what else, you’re gonna sit here and tell me “if people sign up for it that’s their choice”..?
Google is building a censored search engine for China. Think about that.
Think about that. Seriously.
Their effin mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
The same company that is censoring information, in direct conflict with their own mission statement, and thereby empowering authoritarian governments now has alllllll that data about you.
No one can know what will happen when you give a corporation that much insight into and control of your life. No one can give active consent.
If you use a non-Fi native device it won't support Sprint (T-Mobile only) and fast switching from WiFi to cellular is disabled.
It might have limitations but at least it is officially supported. People have already been using non-supported devices on Fi with these same limitations, it was just technically forbidden.
Fi really is a great network, I doubt it would ever happen but I still hope that cost per GB might fall a little in time. I am pleased they added the data ceiling/unlimited after 6 GB.