I finally received my invitation to sign up for Google’s Project Fi. I applied back in June when they first announced it, but they are issuing invitations a few at a time as they work out the kinks. I should have my SIM by the end of the week.
Project Fi is Google’s foray into cell phone service. The plan uses two different cell phone companies, T-Mobile and Sprint, along with WiFi connections. Phone calls and data can be accessed through whichever of the three gives the best connection.
The basic service is $20/month for unlimited talk and text, and then a $1/100-megabyte of data (one dollar per hundred megabytes), which works out to $10/GB. Of course, you are only charged for data over cellular, not WiFi.
A nice feature is that if you don’t use all the data you paid for, the unused cost is credited to your next bill, in $1 increments.
I know some people are grandfathered into unlimited data, and they make use of this (Richard, Dale, …), so for them this is not a good plan. If you use 50 GB in a month, this would cost you $520. But I checked back the past few months and I have averaged about 500-700 MB/month of cellular data, so my total monthly bill should come out around $27 + tax. I get most of my data through WiFi.
Another feature, important to me, is that the plan is good in over 120 countries, including every country I have visited or plan to visit except maybe Vietnam. Calls from those countries to the US are included in the unlimited plan, though calls to those countries do cost typically 20 cents/minute. Data in those countries is included in the data allocation that you pay for.
Before you jump in and try to switch your service, there is a big caveat. Right now the only phone this will work with is the Nexus 6 phone, which I happen to have. That’s because it can handle both kinds of networks: CDMA (Sprint) and GSM (T-Mobile), whereas almost all other phones will only connect to one or the other. Google is rumored to be preparing two new phones to release this fall that should also have this capability, but right now there is only one.
And admittedly T-Mobile and Sprint don’t have as good of coverage as, say, Verizon; even together — their coverage overlaps in most places — but it won’t be any worse than the T-Mobile plan I have now which I’ve found adequate.
