Most carriers offer unlimited data now that becomes deprioritized at a certain point. That means that if the network is congested, other customers are prioritized above them. However, this isn't deprioritization. This is a plan that is throttled down to 256kbps.
Before the return of unlimited, most carriers got rid of overage charges and just slowed phones down to 2G speeds.
Given that Google Fi is just T-Mobile service, this doesn't seem that interesting. First, it's not $30 for a single user. It's $30 per person for 3+ users. I could sign up for T-Mobile Essentials for $30 per person for 3 users and get 50GB of premium data and then just be deprioritized after that rather than slowed even if there isn't congestion.
If you need more than three lines, T-Mobile Essentials is actually cheaper. Again, you get 50GB of premium data and beyond that you're only deprioritized rather than throttled so most of the time you get a full experience.
This new Google Fi plan doesn't include international so it's not like it has that going for it.
Visible from Verizon offers $40 unlimited for a single line down to $25 for 4+ lines - taxes and fees included, and each line gets separate billing so you can share with friends/strangers. Google advises that taxes and fees will be 10-20% on their plans so you can expect that $30 to really be $33-36. Visible's data is lower priority on Verizon's network so things might be slower if there's congestion, but you don't get throttled harshly at 22GB like Google Fi.
There's a huge difference between getting deprioritized and getting 5-10Mbps during congestion and getting throttled down to 256kbps. One still feels like unlimited with the caveat that people paying more might be given some priority. The other simply isn't unlimited. It's a 22GB data plan where you don't get overages, you just get a nearly useless phone. Heck, with deprioritization, most of the time the network probably isn't that congested and you won't get any ill effects.
Without the international roaming, what's the point of Google Fi? It seems like it's just a more expensive plan that isn't unlimited.
OP here, first, the "only for 3+ users" part is definitely strange, I didn't even realize that there was a group discount when I posted this, I just opened the e-mail they sent me and thought it seemed good - so my apologies for the misleading post title.
As for the "Why Google Fi" question... I have been a Google Fi user for about ~5 years now. First, as you said the international roaming is a big feature for me. I (used to) travel to Europe from the US quite a bit, and with Fi I never had to worry about anything. Just charged my standard plan and get a notification when my plane lands in a new country, otherwise business as usual.
But the main "feature" for me is "not having to deal with the phone companies". My experience with T-Mobile & AT&T in the past has been awful. Long wait times calling customer service for functionality that should be available via a website. Sales people trying to upsell when you try to cancel plans etc. In contrast when the pandemic started I switched my Google fi plan from "unlimited" to "flexible" by hitting a single prominent button the Fi app and I was on the cheaper plan for my next billing cycle. Now my phone bill is like $25 / month because I'm mostly on WiFi at home in the pandemic, but if my data usage creeps back up in the future I know swapping plans is literally as easy as hitting a button.
Finally, 22GB is not unlimited, true. I only use my phone on my daily commute but even if I spent 100% of my commute streaming videos on my phone I don't think I'd hit 22GB in a month. If you use more than 22GB mobile data, then Fi is probably not for you. However, unlike other other providers, at least they're completely transparent about it. It's literally in the second line-item of their plans page. Most carriers just say "Unlimited!*" and you have to dig deep into the ToS to find out what the "real" limits are. And if you find yourself somehow over 22GB and need* fast internet again, you can just pay for more if you need to get yourself out of a bind.
It's for people that still trust Google in terms of long term reliability for whatever reason. They think Google won't randomly shut down the service, offering a bland support page for help porting their number to a new carrier (with a gift card thrown in possibly).
As good as Fi sounds, I just can't see it lasting.
I think Google Fi will stick around because it really doesn't sound that good. I don't mean that it sounds bad or anything. It's just that a 22GB plan for $30/mo on a family plan isn't a deal. I can get $25 from Visible/Verizon and it's actually unlimited. I can get $30 (or $26 for 4 lines) from T-Mobile with 50GB of premium data and then unlimited deprioritized data rather than 256kbps throttled data.
I can see it lasting simply because they are charging a lot of money for it.
I used Verizon Prepaid for a while, but ended up getting annoyed at the lower prioritization. Even in a somewhat busy shopping area my data would barely function, let alone any sort of large event. If Visible is anything like that, I wouldn’t probably recommend it. I ended up joining a friend’s Verizon postpaid family. It’s more expensive, but I’m willing to pay it for reliable service.
I’m not sure I’ve ever used 22GB in a month, but throttling to 256k is awful.
Deprioritization can depend on your area. I have an always deprioritized plan (not with Verizon) and I don't notice anything. Maybe it seems slower sometimes? When I compare speed tests between myself and my partner who has premium data on the same network, it doesn't seem any different. Deprioritization can really vary.
Verizon's network has the worst consistency when it comes to delivering more than 5Mbps. That should change in 2022 when Verizon gets new spectrum, but in the meantime they have the most customers and the least spectrum.
22GB is a lot of data, but people are using more and more. T-Mobile recently increased its deprioritization limit to 100GB on their main plan and 50GB on their Essentials plan (and now offers unlimited premium data on their more expensive Magenta MAX). I think more people have started to use more data as video-based social media becomes bigger and bigger.
> Anyone who uses more than 15 GB on Flexible or 22 GB on the unlimited plans in a single cycle will experience slower data until the next cycle (only 1% of people who use Fi ever hit 22 GB). If you want to return to faster data before the cycle's end, you can do so at a rate of $10/GB.
The "data slower" is 256kbps: https://support.google.com/fi/answer/9462101?hl=en. It's not just "slower" like going from 50Mbps to 10Mbps because you're a lower priority. It's like going back in time 10-15 years.
For compare, Comcast Xfinity Mobile is 1.5Mbps. Fucking Comcast is doing 6x less shit evil bad of a job than Google. Google, this is connivingly pathetically mercilessly bad. You need to fix this so bad. This is such an ugly scrooge of a move.
Google Fi launched in 2015, and I feel like this is one part of the plan that just hasn't received any updates or care. Once it wouldn't have been that bad. But now the internet ought move a little faster. Someone has a bad month & goes over & it makes life absolutely miserable on Fi. Google Fi does not have your back, does not care, is just as happy to have you go elsewhere or to work harder, be more careful next time. That your post-cap life is a shitty shitty hell is not a problem for Google Fi.
My gf spends about an hour and a half every day browsing on her phone and watching video while waiting to pick the kids up for school. Only once did she ever breach 15 gigs, and that was during the recent Texas icestorm when we didn't have power for a week.
One bad thing about google fi is if you forget the google account password & email that you associate with the phone number and don't have a 'backup email' for it, it's near impossible to close the account or similar and have it stop charging your credit card until you do a chargeback. Which also means random people can charge your credit card on a subscription.
Google support cannot do anything on their end to get google to stop charging your credit card, and you have to do a chargeback on your side as a result.
The flipside of being screwed if you get locked out of your Google account is that, AFAICT, you're a lot less likely to get sim-swapped by some social-engineered carrier grunt.
I have a Google account specifically for Fi, as uncorrelated as possible with any other Google accounts, enrolled in advanced protection, the idea being that I'm unlikely enough to lose access to the account that the additional security of _not_having a "come show us your ID in the shop" backdoor is a feature.
For these kinds of subscriptions, I just use privacy's virtual credit cards, makes it very easy to stop recurring payments if the company makes it a pita to cancel.
$30/each for at least three lines. At two lines, it's $45/each, and at one, $60/each.
$30/each for two lines might get me to switch. $45/each for our two is close enough to what T-mobile costs us (nearly identical after the taxes get added on, I bet) that it's not worth the effort to change it.
I live in the Northwest, and T-Mobile has great coverage in the cities, and along the interstates. Sprint has some additional coverage on smaller state highways, but neither really cover 'the mountains', or the coat, or other rural areas much. I wish I could take this up, since my 4 unlimited Verizon lines cost $45/line, that is $720/year in savings...
edit, nevermind, no tethering with the $30 plan. So it would be the same cost as my Verizon plan.
Does anyone use Google Fi currently and can speak to the quality of the service? How does it perform while traveling, does it become spotty if you leave a major metro area, do you experience dropped calls, any data throttling?
Its a great service in that regard. I've traveled the US fulltime including remote camping and hiking with Fi for a year and it did great.
The plans are a bit expensive and I don't like how when you run out of unlimted data it becomes unusabley throttled for even basic browsing.
This new plan is a complete disappointment because I was often torn between the $20 + $10/GB (too expensive per GB IMO) and the $70 for 22GB 'unlimited'. Now they offer $60 for 22GB but no tethering. I'd rather have the old unlimited still and I was tired of guessing which months I'd have little data use so I could switch to a cheaper plan. Many times I guessed wrong and paid $80. Other months I picked unlimited and used only 1.5GB.
I like Fi. I like how easy it is to manage via the app. Changing plans is easy, e-sim is great. I think i'm switching to visible or mint though after a few years of Fi. $10/GB doesn't make sense and $70 unlimited is just a bit too uncompetitive despite Fi being a nice provider otherwise.
Google Fi is now just T-Mobile service given that Sprint and T-Mobile have merged.
T-Mobile's network has gotten quite good, but there will be areas where Verizon or AT&T are better (and there are areas where T-Mobile is better). T-Mobile is still integrating the Sprint network, but when they're done in around 12-18 months they'll have significantly more towers than competitors. They likely will still be working on expanding into some more rural areas, but within their footprint they should be very strong. T-Mobile will also have more spectrum which means more reliable service since there's more capacity.
Google Fi is upfront about data throttling. At 22GB, you'll drop down to 256kbps. The plan is really a 22GB plan that doesn't have overage charges.
I feel like I'm always the one with service in a group when we're out in the boonies, though Verizon folks definitely have their moments.
Dropped calls happen sometimes, I guess, I wouldn't say it's worse than cell service in general. One big annoyance is that my phone defaults to calling over wifi, so leaving home after starting a call basically requires hanging up and recalling. I think you can turn this off.
Data always seems fast, but I never hit their billing cap.
MMS fails silently sometimes. This includes group texts.
It worked well enough when I landed in Bangkok a couple years ago. I ended up buying a SIM card for the trip anyway for the better speeds, but I probably could have gotten away with just fi.
That being said I ended up switching off of it to visible to save money (I hardly use data, don’t care that’s it’s much slower). I will say, the extrication was fucking terrible. They kept charging me after canceling, I would complain, chat was slow awful and unresponsive. They kept fucking up for months, and would authorize new charges when trying to fix it. I started issuing charge backs instead. It’s resolved now but damn, keep that in mind, you’re still dealing with Google support (or lack thereof)
I've done a lot of road trips with it around the US for a few years now--it gets really spotty outside of larger towns. On the other hand, it's great to get off a plane in a different country and have a working connection to the internet.
Google Fi auto-switches to use wi-fi or cell network to even receive normal phone calls. I suspect this technology is not perfect and because of that I've faced lots of issues when someone tries to call me but I never get ring on my end and after a few seconds I see a missed call from that person. That's super frustrating to deal with.
Coverage is pretty good. It is great for traveling abroad as it just works in most countries.
However I'm looking to leave because Google's terrible handling of Hangouts which many used for SMS messaging. Hangouts also allowed phones calls on computers, a feature I will miss.
For data roaming inside mainland China, it was smooth, just works. It also has the implicit benefit of being able to access censored website without installing VPN apps.
No idea on other parts, I doesn't make much phone calls.
I used to use it and when it just used Sprint network. It was good with just the Sprint. network for my use case. Now Sprint and TMobile networks are merged - so theoretically it should be better .
Fi uses TMobile/Sprint + US Cellular. They are an MVNO. I don’t think they support WiFi calling on iPhone - deal breaker for those with bad coverage at home/work.
perhaps the most "non-metro" areas I've used it in has been the outskirts of Oaxaca, Mexico and Engelberg, Switzerland and I had no issues at all with coverage.
as expected, slight delay when you switch countries (and thus carriers). it also gets a little confused at the borders of Switzerland/Germany.
family member uses it. i can remember 2-3 times in the past year where SMS failed - random delivery order and time, for ~an hour at a time. i cant remeber that happening with non-google SMS... ever.
For the basic plan, it's [$20+$10/GB]/user/month for 1 user; [$17+$10/GB]/user/month for 3 users; [$16+$10/GB]/user/month for 6 users. So that's a max of a 15% discount for 3 or 20% discount for 6 (when not using data; less of a discount with data-usage).
Then for the next plan, it's $60/user/month for 1 user, $30/user/month for 3 users, and $30/user/month for 6 users. That's a 50% discount from 1 to 3, then no further discount for moving to 6.
I'd guess that the basic-plan is meant for price-sensitive subscribers, so they tried to keep it as cheap as possible, making further discounts difficult. Presumably they can still offer a discount for bundling users since it'd presumably save them by having fewer accounts to manage.
And then I'd guess that $60/month/user to $30/month/user might reflect a premium in the single-user plan. But presumably the sharp drop to a 50% discount by 3 users isn't due to reduced account-management costs (as it's not reflected in the basic-plan's discounts), so.. more competition in that market? Or maybe middle-tier subscribers are more likely to be price-sensitive if they're in a situation where they'd have multiple users on a plan? But then, why no discount for 3 users to 6?
In short, I wonder how they arrived at those price-points? Or, if those are affected by market-competition, I wonder why the market would've pushed them toward those price-points?
I have been using Fi for more than 5 years now. It has worked pretty well domestically and roaming in many countries (except North Macedonia in 2016). When roaming internationally there could be speed limits but in general it is pretty good.
Not to derail to an unrelated complaint about Fi, but it's absolutely wild that if you want to do a 3-way call from your Google Pixel phone using Google Fi service, you can't do it from WiFi (or rather, if you don't turn off WiFi before you start the call, then you'll be muted).
Apparently it's a sort-of-known issue, the workaround is to turn off WiFi before starting your call (wtf?) or use another carrier.
This just seems like a worse version of Mint Mobile's unlimited plan. Same T-Mobile network coverage and less high speed data (22GB vs 35GB). Also Google is going to try to block your hotspot from using high-speed data but I don't know how successful they are at that. Also the Mint pricing is the same $30 regardless of how many lines you have, if you buy a year of service at a time.
Well, they did offer to pay me $30 for limited data a couple of times.
They once offered to send me a Google Home Mini (retailed for ~$30 at the time) in exchange for my Spotify playlists. This was when YouTube Music launched.
Recently, they offered me $30 if I collect all the stamps in Google Pay's Spring Challenge. To get one of the rare stamps, I have to enroll my credit card in their cash back program, which I'm assuming is going to profile my purchase history.
Really wish they'd start supporting Canada. I recently moved to Canada from the US, and I have been using my US Fi number here in Canada too, but I'm dreading the day they will reach out to stop services on my number. (You cannot permanently use a Google Fi number outside the US right now).
Do you think they care? Do they have rules around residency?
I did a bit of searching and found people saying you can sign up and use it in Canada without issues as long as you can provide a US address which shouldn't be a problem, especially that you don't need a physical SIM anymore if your phone supports that.
However I was wondering if this is actually a good deal for us Canadians. I'm with Fido and pay CAD65 for unlimited calling, text and 10GB of data which is less than the USD60 that I saw online. That includes roaming between US/Canada/Mexico but at least right now and for the coming months, that's of little value.
Yes, you are right, Fi is expensive compared to many other options in Canada.
For me, this number is pretty much used for all my Bank/Investment/Social accounts (from my US life), and it will be too much work to replace this everywhere. Too many 2FA accounts use this phone number, etc. I'd like to get out of this dependency, but slowly if I have a choice.
I think the problem is that the Canadian wireless market is so messed up. While there are nominally more than two competitors, given that Bell and Telus share a network it's really just two providers. Plus, countries that have large rural areas to cover tend to have higher wireless prices in general.
It's hard for someone like Google to offer the same pricing for Canadian service given the poor market conditions there.
Unlimited free international data, text and calls for the Plus plan sounds really convenient for travelling, no need to swap to local SIMs. Can you bump your plan up to that for a month in the app, and then back down, hassle free?
Yes, many people suggested doing this for people with expensive travel plans on their main lines, just keep a google fi compatible phone for travel and enable fi when you go for the trip that month. Works great, just use the app to toggle the plan on and off, very simple.
Visible is $25/month with Party Pay for a 4-person party. The key is each party member gets their own bill so there's no risk to forming a party with random people. Easily done on Reddit.
Ok I have 2 friends. How easy would us all be to switch over to this plan? Can we all keep our same number? Can all of us do the process without needing to leave our separate homes?
If you're in a group of three. Not so remarkable - Mint has an unlimited plan for one person for $30, US Mobile has an unlimited plan plus a for a group of three for $25.
Those are some good deals, also Teltik, a service of T-Mobile, has unlimited with unlimited tethering for $40, they may ask for a screenshot
of your storefront as it's for people with buisnesses.
This is an incredibly interesting deal, but the thing is I don't know how long the service would last with Google's rather infamously short product life.
Tethering becomes capped very quickly on Google Fi given the 22GB limit. After you've used 22GB of data for the month (mobile and tethering), you're down to 256kbps.
Yes, T-Mobile/Sprint. However, given that they've merged and T-Mobile is actively integrating the Sprint network, it will realistically just be T-Mobile soon.
T-Mobile has announced that it will be decommissioning 7,000-8,000 Sprint cell sites by the end of 2021 and 35,000 by the end of 2022. Around 10,000 Sprint cell sites will also be removed from the Sprint network and added to the T-Mobile network during this time.
Google Fi phones tended to camp on the T-Mobile network most of the time and any advantage of being able to also use the Sprint network will be gone soon. Even before Sprint towers are decommissioned, many will have most of their spectrum/capacity moved to T-Mobile towers. T-Mobile has been aggressively moving Sprint's 2.5GHz spectrum to T-Mobile's network to provide Ultra Capacity 5G and they've moved some of Sprint's PCS spectrum as well. I wouldn't expect much of a Sprint network left a year from now.
Most carriers offer unlimited data now that becomes deprioritized at a certain point. That means that if the network is congested, other customers are prioritized above them. However, this isn't deprioritization. This is a plan that is throttled down to 256kbps.
Before the return of unlimited, most carriers got rid of overage charges and just slowed phones down to 2G speeds.
Given that Google Fi is just T-Mobile service, this doesn't seem that interesting. First, it's not $30 for a single user. It's $30 per person for 3+ users. I could sign up for T-Mobile Essentials for $30 per person for 3 users and get 50GB of premium data and then just be deprioritized after that rather than slowed even if there isn't congestion.
If you need more than three lines, T-Mobile Essentials is actually cheaper. Again, you get 50GB of premium data and beyond that you're only deprioritized rather than throttled so most of the time you get a full experience.
This new Google Fi plan doesn't include international so it's not like it has that going for it.
Visible from Verizon offers $40 unlimited for a single line down to $25 for 4+ lines - taxes and fees included, and each line gets separate billing so you can share with friends/strangers. Google advises that taxes and fees will be 10-20% on their plans so you can expect that $30 to really be $33-36. Visible's data is lower priority on Verizon's network so things might be slower if there's congestion, but you don't get throttled harshly at 22GB like Google Fi.
There's a huge difference between getting deprioritized and getting 5-10Mbps during congestion and getting throttled down to 256kbps. One still feels like unlimited with the caveat that people paying more might be given some priority. The other simply isn't unlimited. It's a 22GB data plan where you don't get overages, you just get a nearly useless phone. Heck, with deprioritization, most of the time the network probably isn't that congested and you won't get any ill effects.
Without the international roaming, what's the point of Google Fi? It seems like it's just a more expensive plan that isn't unlimited.