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Comment by bovermyer | Hacker News Reader

When I switched to Google Fi, my phone bill dropped from $140 a month (Verizon, two people) to $60 a month (1 person), including the monthly finance charge for my phone.

Now, with two people and no phone financing, our bill is a combined $80 a month most months.

I don't see why I'd use this Unlimited plan, given that it's much more expensive.

Also, unrelated: Google Fi has been amazing when travelling abroad (Dominican Republic and Thailand, specifically). Full signal and no added charges everywhere there.

Sadly, my wife and I are planning to go back to Verizon just to get iPhones.

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I use Fi on an iPhone, you don't have to switch if you don't want to - I certainly wouldn't.

> Sadly, my wife and I are planning to go back to Verizon just to get iPhones.

Fi supports iPhones somewhat. The coverage isn't quite as good, due to lack of support for using multiple networks simultaneously, but it works.

FWIW, I get better coverage with just T-Mobile on my OnePlus 6T than I did from Sprint/T-Mobile when I was on a Pixel phone; I generally had to manually switch the credit carrier whenever it selected Sprint because it was basically unusable due to how slow it was.

I pay $145 a month on T-Mobile for 6 lines with "unlimited" everything, international data, and discount international call/text.

Around the same for me as well. And I do find the "unlimited" is pretty much as advertised even with deprioritization since I live in a rural area. My average use on one of the lines is 250GB/mo. It usually sits around 35mbit down, 5mbit up... this compares favorably with cable options in my area.

I don't think I've ever been throttled though I go over the 2GB kickback limit every so often and it costs me $10.

T-Mobile international data is too slow. 128kbps at present. If you travel a lot, or even a little but use your phone a lot for on-the-fly planning, work, etc., Fi is a better option. In fact, that is Fi's greatest advantage for me.

I guess if you're playing on social media or youtube but it's fine for Maps, Email, and Messaging. When we were in Italy for a few weeks it was more than enough as most places had free WiFi.

In my experiences in Sweden and the Netherlands, it's a struggle to use T-Mobile's 2G international data to perform simple tasks, even using Maps and sending messages on Signal.

I just came back from Europe and opted to pay for the upgraded international T-Mobile plan since 2G is barely usable. LTE was around $35 for 15gb. It was way more useful than 2G but it also felt like I wasn't getting full LTE speeds for some reason.

Same here. WhatsApp seems to work fine but most other messaging apps struggle at 128kbps.

When _good_ Wi-Fi is readily available it really helps but I found that I can’t depend on it and it’s much more convenient to have fast service on my phone. Nothing More frustrating than not losing time trying to get find good internet to handle changes of plans, or find a good restaurant, etc.

Even throttled fi, which is very slow, is twice the speed of t-mobile’s regular speed... I can’t imagine trying to check out photos of a few place to compare on maps with those speeds.

Does that include taxes and fees? Does it include unlimited tethering? I'm paying the same for 4 lines with unlimited everything except only 2gb per line for tethering. Seems like I might be getting ripped off...

T-Mobile One plans include all of that in the price. The only fees are on international charges.

I'm not sure what the official stance is on tethering but I think it's just throttled. I bring my own device and I have never experienced throttling or denial of tethering thought so Idk.

Can you even sign up for T-Mobile One anymore? I thought they had replaced it with 'Magento' or whatever and grandfathered One.

My phone is a Walmart special $30/no but my wife, on Fi, spends the max (~$90). She streams music for our kid, while driving. Dropping her to $70/mo is a win for me. Obviously everyone is different but I just wanted to point out the per person cap in a normal plan can be higher than the unlimited. I converted her over yesterday.

If you have youtube red google will download the 500 most common songs to your phone, which really helps minimize the bandwidth for streaming audio.

You can even edit playlists on the desktop and play those playlists on the car. Said playlist will auto download to your phone.

Sadly, it's hard to live outside the iMessage ecosystem. Android has much nicer and affordable hardware

Fi officially supports iPhones as of a few months ago.

I... did not know that.

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