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Comment by shanecoin | Hacker News Reader

Google Fi is the only provider that I know of to best protect against SIM swapping due to the fact that there is no human interface. An attacker would have to get control of you Google account in order to attack you—if this happens it is likely you have bigger issues than SIM swapping.

Given Jack Dorsey's recent Sim swapping experience coupled with countless cryptocurrency SIM swapping horror stories, it feels like Google Fi is necessary. The only negative thing I have heard about Google Fi is the requirement to pay per GB. This point is now moot.

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The only issue is that it is Google.

I use Google Fi outside the country and put the plan back in pause while I'm in the US. I'm very satisfied with them but don't trust Google enough to switch my main number.

Bingo! They could "sunset" Fi on a whim when they get bored. Plus Google's poor record of customer service or rather AI Bot customer service - is what will keep away me from trying it.

"Poor record" is actually not my experience. Customer service with Fi and Google Store is pretty excellent. A lot of people in my network also have the same good experience.

I've been on Fi for 4 years, and it has been a very flexible, positive experience vs. the alternatives at that time. Even if they were to sunset it, I don't particularly see the risk; I would just change to another service.

Fi customer service is actually excellent. First level support is actually knowledgeable and trying to help you, as opposed to just being a wall trying to prevent you from reaching second level support. Also the wait times have never been more than 2-3 minutes for me.

Like the other comments noted, in my experience Fi support has been quite helpful and significantly better than standard Google support.

In my state, their coverage is pretty bad if you spend any time in the outdoors. Comparing the coverage of google-fi and verzion and att on highways through the mountains, its very stark. I'm also curious how they will fare when 2 of their 3 MVNO providers merge (sprint and tmobile)

Eventually service will improve. Presently Sprint and T-Mobile both dedicate spectrum to the same thing. They have to reserve some spectrum for legacy applications while optimizing for newer technologies. By combining their spectrum they might be able to reduce the aggregate spectrum necessary for legacy applications and better utilize spectrum fro newer technologies.

Avoiding overlaps helps with bandwidth. I don't know if it will help with coverage.

It might help with coverage as they aren’t needing 2x as many towers to cover the same area, thus potentially justifying adding towers in new places, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that happening in any broad way.

I've yet to hear anything good about the coverage in my city - New Orleans.

Meanwhile, my work phone on AT&T has some of the worst LTE coverage imaginable around town in the bay area - constantly without a meaningful data connection - while my wife's identical phone on Google Fi is almost never below fell bars, and her data connection is rock solid.

>Talk to a human anytime Whenever you have questions, talk or chat 24/7 with real, friendly people who are ready to help.

Source: the website

My only concern with that is -- what if you actually need human support?

They do have human support. I've called it when my phone unexpectedly bricked itself and after jumping through a few support hoops, they sent me a new one. It was not a bad experience.

I've had a few problems with my family plan and my parents. All resolved pretty quickly via chat. I'd much rather have a bit of lag/latency of chat than listening to that awful hold music with periodic "We appreciate you patience" that always triggers me to think the wait if over.

The chat folks seem much better than most, none of the crap where they don't understand and just waste your time. They had to the power to change my account, fix problems, and gasp actually got back to me.

Interestingly their human support has been good, considering how annoying and not helpful human support is with other Google services.

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