Google’s Project Fi now caps data bills at $60

I 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.

Also 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.

FYI they will throttle users down to 256kbps if an individual user goes above 15G.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6201699" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6201699</a>

This is great. I just don&#x27;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&#x27;s about $15&#x2F;month for 10GB plus unlimited text&#x2F;calls. They don&#x27;t even offer there plans with 2GB data, it&#x27;s 10GB or more.

I 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.<p>Probably 50% of my phone calls either dropped or had huge latency as a result.

I used to be on Project Fi, but it had the negative side effect of making me always equate data usage to money. e.g. &quot;Watching this YouTube video will probably cost $0.50. Is it worth it?&quot; This resulted me in using ~2GB of data, which was a $40 phone bill. I switched to a T-Mobile 10GB plan for $50&#x2F;mo (unlimited 3G data after 10GB), and I couldn&#x27;t be happier.

Using this story to ask: is poor voice-call quality common with Fi? I&#x27;m using a Nexus 6P. This is my first smartphone and I&#x27;m totally happy with the device and Project Fi for browsing, apps, texting, and tethering. But for plain voice calls the latency, dropouts, and &quot;underwater&quot; 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 <i>better</i> (closer to Skype) when I bought a leading smartphone. I don&#x27;t know if I should blame the service or the device. It&#x27;s worse than laptop VOIP over DSL, my POTS voice line, or even a cheap feature phone circa 2010.

I wonder if this new policy affects international data usage at all. I&#x27;ve been sticking with Project Fi largely due to how seamless the data roaming experience has been for me.

I pay $240 a month for 5 voice lines with &quot;unlimited data&quot; 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&#x27;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&#x27;s good enough in a pinch).<p>They don&#x27;t throttle your dada over a certain limit but you do get deprioritized during times of network congestion. My son who doesn&#x27;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&#x27;s not at the gym, she watches about two or three hours of streaming video a day.<p>I haven&#x27;t had a problem with T-mobile except in very rural areas but that doesn&#x27;t happen often at all.

I live in a US state capital city for part of the year and Google Fi only offers 2G coverage there. Otherwise I&#x27;d have a new Pixel 2 XL and pods on the way and be like AT&amp;T who?

I 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 &#x27;plan B&#x27; if my fiber connection drops (not that I would want to run all my traffic over it for long...).<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6330195?hl=en" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.google.com&#x2F;fi&#x2F;answer&#x2F;6330195?hl=en</a>

Honestly for me this wont matter. I typically only spend 40$ a month $20 talk&#x2F;text then $20 data. I also find the fine print interesting.<p>&gt;&quot;If you use more than 15GB of data in a month (under 1% of current fi users you&#x27;ll expect slower data speeds with Bill Protection&quot;<p>So with Bill Protection you get throttled, but if you pay then you don&#x27;t... Interesting.

FWIW, my Virgin Mobile plan costs $60 a month and isn&#x27;t slowed until 23 gigabytes. Their unlimited plans for new customers are $50 per month.<p>As much as Google touts the &quot;flexibility&quot; 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.

The best part about Google Fi is that you can use it <i>everywhere</i> for the same price. Even in China!

Question, why are mobile phone contracts in the US so expensive? In the UK I pay £17&#x2F;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.

I switched to Project Fi as I&#x27;m always doing International Roaming. The Fi data is the same cost internationally as domestically. This is a really killer feature if you&#x27;re on the road a lot.

When can I use an iPhone on Project Fi?

Project 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&#x27;s school being met with dead silence.

In Europe, I pay $20 for unlimited mobile data at 100mbps.