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Google’s Project Fi now caps data bills at $60
- jahabrewer 9y agoAlso worth noting is that you now "post-pay" for the data you used at the end of the billing cycle instead of pre-paying. I know that it works out roughly the same, but it always struck me as unnecessarily complex that I had to guess how much data I would use, get billed for that, then get refunded for what I didn't use.
- paulirwin 9y agoAgreed, that was always weird. I suppose the point was to allow for data usage alert push notifications so you don't end up with a surprise large bill at the end of the billing cycle.
- mohaine 9y agoThis. I upped my amount just to avoid the messages. The cap at $60 is a really nice addition. I've had lots of people want to go to Fi but as heavy data users they just couldn't.
- casey_lang 9y agoI just switched to Project Fi this month. The service has been totally acceptable and the support has been really helpful. Before today's announcement I found myself constantly checking the Project Fi app to see how much data I had used, something I never did on my old provider. This change is much appreciated. I'm especially a fan of them simply rolling this out, no need to opt in. The only way I would know of improved plan options on my old provider was by having a conversation with a sales rep after a support call. I do wish the price per gig was slightly cheaper but I'm comfortable with the increased cost for the improvement of service.
- codereflection 9y agoThis is my case too. Switching 5 phones for my family over to Google Fi. So far it's been excellent. I too was checking my data in the Project Fi app. Happy to not have to do that anymore.
- saturdaysaint 9y agoFWIW, my Virgin Mobile plan costs $60 a month and isn't slowed until 23 gigabytes. Their unlimited plans for new customers are $50 per month. As much as Google touts the "flexibility" to theoretically pay less, using less than 6 gigabytes is pretty difficult in 2018 unless you use very few services and have no interest in video.
- codereflection 9y agoIt's not difficult if you're on wifi for the majority of the time.
- taoistextremist 9y agoI rarely go over 2 GB a month. What are you doing to use so much? Or are you on a group plan?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoGoogle Maps everyday and streaming music and sometimes video. That's enough to cross 2GB trivially unless you are on something like T-Mobile that does not consider major audio-video streaming sites against their data cap.
- willidiots 9y agoDo you opportunistically use Wi-Fi? Or just LTE all the time?
- kinkrtyavimoodh 9y agoI have WiFi on when I am at home or work. When I am outdoors I often force it off because it ends up connecting to weak signals that are not actually useful and basically causes the phone to not 'see' any internet.
- dajohnson89 9y ago
- vuln 9y agoHonestly for me this wont matter. I typically only spend 40$ a month $20 talk/text then $20 data. I also find the fine print interesting. >"If you use more than 15GB of data in a month (under 1% of current fi users you'll expect slower data speeds with Bill Protection" So with Bill Protection you get throttled, but if you pay then you don't... Interesting.
- croshan 9y agoI take it to mean you don't pay from 6-15 GB, and then pay onwards, if you want to avoid throttling. So, you still benefit $90, while getting the same quality service if you want to pay the old prices. 15 GB/month really seems like a lot, though, coming from someone who uses 1, maybe 2 GB, with Fi.
- Someone1234 9y agoSeems like a fair scheme with few downsides. Definitely nice to know that my bill cannot go higher than $80/month even with some type of data usage run-away (look at you YouTube Kids!).
- seishan 9y agoI wonder if this new policy affects international data usage at all. I've been sticking with Project Fi largely due to how seamless the data roaming experience has been for me.
- tabrischen 9y agoIn the article it does say: The bill protection feature includes international data (which is always included) and also applies to data-only plans for laptops, tablets and cars.
- hedgew 9y agoIn Europe, I pay $20 for unlimited mobile data at 100mbps.
- p1mrx 9y agoHow much does that cost if you roam outside of Europe?
- dajohnson89 9y agowhat's your income tax %?
- ac29 9y agoHow "unlimited" is that? Could you use 1TB/month? 10T? More?
- cynix 9y agoNo more than around 33TB/month, I bet!
- abrkn 9y agoThe best part about Google Fi is that you can use it everywhere for the same price. Even in China!
- philipkglass 9y agoUsing this story to ask: is poor voice-call quality common with Fi? I'm using a Nexus 6P. This is my first smartphone and I'm totally happy with the device and Project Fi for browsing, apps, texting, and tethering. But for plain voice calls the latency, dropouts, and "underwater" sounds are significantly worse than with my old prepaid feature phone, even when I see a strong signal. I had hoped that voice quality would get better (closer to Skype) when I bought a leading smartphone. I don't know if I should blame the service or the device. It's worse than laptop VOIP over DSL, my POTS voice line, or even a cheap feature phone circa 2010.
- wakamoleguy 9y agoIt could depend what network you are on behind the scenes. There are special codes you can use to switch networks if you are in an area covered by more than one. In general, cell quality voice should be similar to that of a POTS line. Better codecs can provide higher quality for VoIP, even on small bandwidth, but with "real" phones you are going to get the lowest common denominator.
- xythian 9y agoThis was my experience as well with Project Fi. Good data, bad voice. T-mobile and ATT based MVNOs have typically given me better voice service.
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoOne test would be to use gHangouts, Duo, Wire, etc. to make a voice call instead of the dialer app (so that you could compare voice-as-data with a regular call).
- blacksmith_tb 9y agoI wonder how this will impact Project Fi data-only SIMs[1] I have toyed with the idea of switching to Fi to pop one of those into my Mikrotik router as a 'plan B' if my fiber connection drops (not that I would want to run all my traffic over it for long...). 1: https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6330195?hl=en
- mbrameld 9y agoI live in a US state capital city for part of the year and Google Fi only offers 2G coverage there. Otherwise I'd have a new Pixel 2 XL and pods on the way and be like AT&T who?
- chrisconroy 9y agoFYI they will throttle users down to 256kbps if an individual user goes above 15G. https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6201699 https://support.google.com/fi/answer/6201699
- praneshp 9y agoBut you can go back to full speed at the $10/GB rate again.
- j_s 9y agoI may have missed my chance to participate in this discussion, but this is the part I didn't understand. Does this mean that when 1 phone goes past 15GB, it is necessary to opt-out of the cap to return to normal speeds? If not (and it doesn't make sense if opting out of the cap is somehow possible), is there ever any case where someone would _not_ want to go back to the normal speed as they cross the 15GB on the way to passing the cap? Is the intention just to throw in a minor speed bump requiring the affected 1% of users to contact support every month (leaving the few that are ignorant throttled)?
- praneshp 9y agoGreat question. If I remember I'll reply somewhere in a month, I'll try to go past the 15GB mark by then. Opting out of the cap would make this useless for me. But if you were reimbursed by an employer upto $X and that's what you want to spend, not going to normal speed starts to make sense.
- shazzy 9y agoQuestion, why are mobile phone contracts in the US so expensive? In the UK I pay £17/month for 4G, unlimited data, and free roaming in a whole bunch of countries (including US). Anecdotally, when I roam in the US the speed is faster than my SO who lives there.
- tlarkworthy 9y agoUK is anomalously cheap (e.g. compared to other European countries)
- dsr_ 9y agoWe have four networks who are all colluding to keep the price up, presumably by the gas-station effect rather than annual meetings of the Cell Price Setting Conspiracy.
- pkaye 9y agoT-mobile has better plans than this though the deals keep on changing. My current family plan works out to $30/person in my family for 4G unlimited voice/messaging and 20GB data. They do have a unlimited data plan but I hardly ever exceed 5GB myself. Also I get roaming into Canada/Mexico. And messaging/data when traveling abroad (no voice for free abroad.)
- horsecaptin 9y agoWhen can I use an iPhone on Project Fi?
- jwilliams 9y agoYou can right now - but you do need to activate on a compatible phone. You can then swap in an iPhone. It'll function fine, with some features missing (MMS, Carrier Swapping) missing. I use a Project Fi data SIM in an iPhone as a secondary device.
- bernardino 9y agoYep, this is true. Currently typing this on an iPhone SE with Project Fi. For MMS, I highly recommend using Hangouts (particularly for voicemail). But otherwise, I use iMessages. I have been doing this for the past year, it’s been working smoothly.
- horsecaptin 9y agoOne of the big features of ProjectFi is the worldwide roaming, and we can't get that on an iPhone from what I've seen. MMS via Hangouts is nice though.
- jwilliams 9y agoThe worldwide roaming works too. You just need to set the APN correctly. APN is something like h2g2.
- horsecaptin 9y agoWhoa. Thank you!
- croshan 9y agoProbably never. As a 6P user on Fi since it left beta, it seems to be built to lock you in to the Nexus/Pixel/Google ecosystem. And if it hasn't changed, the OS supposedly also has to be stock to allow for Fi to work.
- tinyhouse 9y agoThis is great. I just don't understand why mobile plans are so expensive in the US. When I traveled to Israel I bought a local sim with no contract. It's about $15/month for 10GB plus unlimited text/calls. They don't even offer there plans with 2GB data, it's 10GB or more.
- Shoothe 9y agoFor 15$ at my operator I've got two numbers sharing the same unlimited text, unlimited sms/MMS plan with 30 GB of data. Actually it's 15$ max, if I use less I pay less. The "contract" that I have can be withdrawn with a month's notice and that's a standard service, so paying $60 for 6GB sounds extremely expensive.
- fastball 9y agoUS providers are expected to provide national coverage, in a country that has a much wider spread of population, while also being approximately the size of Europe. It's not exactly an easy area to cover.
- Retric 9y agoCellphone towers minimize the impact of density. Lower density and you can use fewer towers. The limit is one cellphone tower within 45 miles of you or 1 tower per ~6,000 square miles as they can have up to 45 mile radious ^ 2 * pi - overlapping area. Continual US is only 3 million square miles or ~500 cellphone towers. You do need significantly more towers for various reasons, but towers only run 250,000$ aka ~150 million to cover US own. However it's really spectrum and city's that are expensive not empty land.
- ForHackernews 9y agoIn the UK, Three provides nationwide coverage + free roaming in 71 other nations (including USA)[0] for as little as £13/month for 4 GB of data. [0] http://www.three.co.uk/feel-at-home http://www.three.co.uk/feel-at-home [1] http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones http://www.three.co.uk/Store/SIM/Plans_for_phones
- maxaf 9y agoProject Fi is a non-starter for anyone who relies on their phone for critical functions such as telephone service. Phone numbers are still king, and losing mine as a result of some spurious Google account deletion would result in calls from my child's school being met with dead silence.
- ariwilson 9y agoSo do you have an actual example of this happening with Project Fi?
- oconnore 9y agoI’m in Portugal right now, and my partner, who just recently switched to Fi, has no access to her previous google voice number, and her main number (and Fi service in general) has been on and off. Several people have complained they can’t reach her. I guess the previous poster was referring to losing a number permanently, but still. Seems like they are still ironing out basic services like phone numbers.
- lev99 9y agoWhen you switch to Fi you have the option of moving your google voice number to a different account. When you leave Fi you have the option of moving your original number back to a traditional carrier. Or, at least that's how it worked in 2016 when I tried Fi.
- greysonp 9y agoI used to be on Project Fi, but it had the negative side effect of making me always equate data usage to money. e.g. "Watching this YouTube video will probably cost $0.50. Is it worth it?" This resulted me in using ~2GB of data, which was a $40 phone bill. I switched to a T-Mobile 10GB plan for $50/mo (unlimited 3G data after 10GB), and I couldn't be happier.
- DrScump 9y agoAre you in the USA? I pay about $115/mo for 5 lines after the Kickback rebates, and that includes Netflix. Modern plans don't throttle until something like 23GB in a month.
- CryoLogic 9y agoI moved from Project Fi to Mint Sim and could not be happier. Project Fi forces you to call over wifi if your phone supports it, and constantly is swapping cell providers to find the cheapest. Even mid call. Probably 50% of my phone calls either dropped or had huge latency as a result.
- jwilliams 9y agoI switched to Project Fi as I'm always doing International Roaming. The Fi data is the same cost internationally as domestically. This is a really killer feature if you're on the road a lot.
- scarface74 9y agoI pay $240 a month for 5 voice lines with "unlimited data" and one data only line for my iPad with T-mobile. They also throw in a Netflix subscription in with it that I was paying for separately so really it's $230. It has 2G international data roaming included in most places and 4G roaming in Mexico and Canada. Finally it has unlimited 3G tethering (that's good enough in a pinch). They don't throttle your dada over a certain limit but you do get deprioritized during times of network congestion. My son who doesn't live with us uses his phone for internet exclusively and he does 80GB+ a month without a noticeable slow down. My wife has a split shift and between her shift, when she's not at the gym, she watches about two or three hours of streaming video a day. I haven't had a problem with T-mobile except in very rural areas but that doesn't happen often at all.