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Google Fi Rolls Out eSIM support for Existing iOS Subscribers
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I’m looking to use it when I’m in the US on work, vacation, visiting family, etc (I spend about 2-3 months a year there). Right now, I use Verizon prepaid, but can’t do Dual SIM with that (and no eSIM where I live). So, obviously Verizon is the better network, but I’d get to skip buying SIM cards every time I travel. Plus I’d get eSIM which is a nice bonus — for when family/clients need to reach me, and I don’t have to deal with the mess in iMessage every time I swap SIMs.
Any thoughts would be hugely appreciated.
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I have the same thoughts, but after learning everything via the Snowden leaks, US telecom is one of the few places where everyone is leaking all your data to many places, so Google actually may be either equal or better to its competitors in terms of privacy.
Your biggest hurdle will be the ToS.
Here's a link to that - https://fi.google.com/about/tos/#welcome
Here's the specific section-
Note the first line...
Thank you! That’s great to note! I’m not too worried about the data consumption ratio. My data usage abroad would be pretty minimal, except for a few weeks a year while traveling. Other than that I’d use my local foreign number where I live.
My main concern is whether the convenience of Dual SIM & international roaming would outweigh the crappiness of the Sprint/T-mobile network, or if Verizon with a wallet full of SIM cards is better.
It’s mostly a lie told and perpetuated to justify the ridiculous charges. Anyway, Germany has some of the sh*tt*est coverage in smaller towns and villages amongst the developed world.
I hope this will be available for visitors to the US. I recently visited and I was able to get a SIM at the airport but it was very expensive for not much data. It'd be great to be able to arrange something before travelling rather than worrying about having to find a SIM card there.
I’m a US resident — I own a house there and would use that billing address.
I think any of the US carriers would close your account if your phone is spending a high amount of time outside the US, since international roaming is very expensive for them. Regardless of your billing address. There's lots of blog posts from people living outside the US having their US-based service blocked after a few months.
T-Mobile isn't bad, in a lot of denser cities it's actually faster than Verizon and AT&T since they have so much more capacity. The only time it may be trouble is if you're in far-off remote areas (lakes, mountains), but even then it has gotten much better over the years.
I've been on Google Fi for the past year (on a Pixel 3a) and I'm very pleased with it. My use case scenario is that I am 99% of the time on WiFi and almost never use cellular data. Therefore, my monthly bill is between $25 to $26.
$20 is unlimited text and phone calls and the rest is taxes and fees, with a few cents of data usage.
This beats my paying AT&T almost $70 per month before.
I've been happy with the Google Fi service and have no need or desire to switch away either.
Thanks! I haven’t used T-Mobile since the early 2000s, so much has changed.
As for the account, I’ve been living outside the US for 5 years and had no issue with Verizon, or AT&T before that. They’re perfectly happy to take my money, especially since I only use the plan a few months a year.
Right, as long as you pause the service while out of the country they should be OK. Pausing only lasts for a couple months so you might have to keep on top of it to be sure it stays paused.
Not coverage areas. I have seen parts of Brasil that have no coverage for thousands of KM2. In continental USA, it nearly has coverage across the whole country as there are people and coverage is required by congress to cover something like 99.9% of all areas so farmers and people who live in remote areas have access to data and voice anywhere.
I have seen prices in some European countries and some Asian countries and think sure it’s super inexpensive, but they’re covering equivalent of like one US State with coverage. I don’t actually believe that it cost more in America considering the regulations. Now, if could just have carriers who cover all of one state even the size of Texas or Alaska, it would cost far less for the carrier to operate. That’s the catch 22. To provide service here, you have to provide service everywhere in the USA. Why we now only have three big carriers but lots of MVNOs.
And, with family plans when a person has four or more people in the family, even some of the best plans workout to around $40 unlimited everything except maybe limited on hotspot for iPad and MacBooks to 15GB.
And there are low cost MVNOs that provide service for easily $25 per month with 2GB data, unlimited calls and texts. The people who are in specific areas covered by these and who are single can surely get a better deal than going with Verizon Alone.
I have T-Mobile. Myself, Partner, Two Kids, and our service is $230 per month. We travel internationally nonstop, and T-Mobile gives us access to free international texting and slower 3G data in something like 150 countries. Includes two iPhone 11s, six phone lines, as we have two business lines, and six data plans for tablets as two for kids, one for me, and three for business. So much of that is via credits. Like added each plan new and got 50% off the plan. And the two iPhone 11s were 50% off with monthly discounts. So overall about 35% of plans are 50% off and both tablet new tablet plans were free. I don’t think it’s a bad value. The monthly bill says $400 but with credits it’s only $23
Many people here also have their friends and family sharing plans to get those types of discounts. Just need one person to be willing to pay and collect monies monthly. It can be a pain but it saves for everyone.
Living in Thailand, Singapore and Japan for long stretches, I have always kept USA T-Mobile then add plans in those countries. Singapore costs about $20 USD monthly but it’s tiny. So easy to provide coverage. Thailand is less than $20 and I get a true 80GB of Data with 300 phone call minutes and 3000 texts. Sure it’s bigger than Singapore but not much bigger than Texas with high population density at 56m people. Then there’s Japan which I don’t understand why it only costs about $30 USD as it has super high cost living and services are more expensive.
So there are a lot of factors at play in what determines cost. Cheers and stay safe everyone!
The fees are what keep me from using Fi. I use ATT (prepaid) and it's $40 a month for unlimited talk, text, and 10GB of data that I can use how I want (eg, hotspot). I feel like Fi only makes sense if you use 1gb or less.
Well - it's Google. Any catches? Let me think... They'll be tracking your location, listening to your phone calls, reading all the text messages and emails on your phone, following your browsing history, making associations with all of your contacts, and in general data mining anything and everything else on your phone. I'm not saying the other communications companies don't do that, but these things are at the very heart and soul of what Google does to make money (usually by offering their software/services for "free").
I haven’t seen this mentioned yet, but in the United States cell phone infrastructure is built out by the providers with, at best, tax incentives. In most European countries and Third World countries, cell phone networks are at least partly built out by the government. They view programs like cell phone service as a public good.
But if you pause service you don't pay the base rate. Saves you that $20/month.
A fair point
As I’m not from the US, I’m not really informed on the quality of service. in my country the regulator defines a minimum level of service quality which the operators have to comply with or they are (supposedly) heavily fined. As a result you get 3G pretty much everywhere (only on very remote areas you drop to 2G) and 4G in most of the country, to the point the operator you chose is mostly based on who gives you the best plan and not necessarily on who has the best coverage on your specific area. Downside being it takes ages for them to roll out new technologies or features (no 5G yet and VoLTE was only launched last year). I thought the FCC or some other Federal organ had similar requirements. Hoepfuly it gets better for you guys in the future!I believe communication prices tend to follow +/- the income level of each country. But in the US at least, even considering the higher income level, they are definitely paying above average.
This isn’t entirely accurate. T-Mobile and Sprint both offer free unlimited 2G data in pretty much every country in the world. In all my time spent abroad since I’ve had T-Mobile, which collectively add up to multiple months, the free 2G data has been perfectly sufficient for basic web browsing, looking up maps, getting public transportation directions, or requesting an Uber. If, for whatever reason, I need full speed LTE I can always log in to my T-Mobile account and have it in 30 seconds by paying $5 for the day, $35 for 10 days or $50 for the month. I’ve only ever found myself using that a handful of times though.
My bad, you’re right about T-Mobile. It’s fairly restrictive though - I went on a 14 day trip to Japan, paid for high speed for the first (I think 10 days?), but didn’t want to purchase an entire month, so dealt with the slow speeds after.
It’s definitely nice being able to pay as you go rather than pre-purchase data that you may not use.