Project Fi by Google | Hacker News Reader

Project Fi by Google

fi.google.com

1,107 points_optl581 comments

For those who don't want to read the FAQ or find the video incredibly unhelpful [1]:

a. It only supports the Nexus 6 out of the gate.

b. It automatically switches you to the "fastest" network available. Partners out of the gate are Sprint and T-mobile. Sounds like it prefers Wifi, then 4G LTE, and then degrades down to 3G or 2G.

c. Pricing is $20 for unlimited talk (domestic) and text (domestic and international) and wi-fi tethering. Data is $10 per Gig. (Plus taxes, etc.) No support for unlimited data. they also refund you all the unlimited data at the end of the month.

d. No annual contract required.

e. Supports calls over wi-fi.

Coverage map here: https://fi.google.com/coverage

[1] Not even sure why they made a video, it doesn't explain a thing...

Edit: clarified domestic talk pricing, and refunding data.

The FAQ isn't particularly helpful, considering that instead of directly answering the FAQs, Google just kind of weasels its way around them.

For example: "Q: Does moving between networks affect my battery life? A: We like full batteries too. Our software is optimized to not put extra strain on your battery by only moving you between networks when absolutely necessary."

Just say "Yes", Google. Just say fucking "Yes". It's not that fucking hard to say fucking "Yes".

Another example: "Q: When will Project Fi support other smartphones? A: The Nexus 6 is the first smartphone that supports Project Fi's network of networks. During Project Fi's Early Access Program we plan to only support the Nexus 6."

That doesn't answer the question at all. The question asks "when", and Google just resorts to repeating the same exact information that prompted the question in the first place.

Google does understand the point of FAQs, right? To answer common questions about things? Or are they too busy half-assing their Fiber rollout and building self-driving cars to stop and notice how much they suck at giving straight answers to even the questions that they fucking wrote?

> Just say "Yes", Google. Just say fucking "Yes". It's not that fucking hard to say fucking "Yes".

Do you really need a "yes" there? I think it is pretty normal to have a stupid PR response there -- of course the answer is "yes". There is no other way.

Then why have it on the FAQ?

Again, for PR reasons.

My point is that Google, of all companies, should be grown-up-enough to be able to resist the temptation to feed its users PR non-answers. Google's supposed to be bucking trends, "Do[ing] No Evil(TM)", etc.; they've set a higher standard and they're not meeting it.

C'mon, "Do[ing] No Evil(TM)" is itself a PR non-answer to explain why we shouldn't be worried about their dangerous centralization of data and infrastructure.

At Microsoft (and I'm sure at Google), there was an internal "rude FAQ" that was full of these answers. I felt it a shame we couldn't just publish that, instead.

That Google is long gone.

Well the real question is "Does it increase radio power usage more than a couple percent?", not whether it literally takes a single joule.

Also the answer could be no! Transferring to a better connection can let you run the radio at lower power.

Have a Snickers.

Why?

"You're not you when you're hungry"

eats a Snickers

Nobody likes a Diva

data is paid per-MB with no limits as far as i can see

Everything you said is correct, I just want to make two tiny clarifications:

- It is unlimited talk (domestic) and unlimited text (domestic and international). International talk costs extra.

What was said in your post was accurate, but the way it was worded could confuse people into believing that it is unlimited international talk.

The pricing is a little more nuanced than you said.

- It is $20 (talk/text) and then $10 per gig of data. However they refund you all unused data at the end of the month. So if you buy 1 gig of data for $10 and only use 0.5 gig, they credit back $5.

Which is an important distinction as that is their USP: cost savings by refunding unused data.

The "refund" language is confusing for the purposes of advertising, and I wouldn't bother repeating it. It's by-the-gig pricing, full stop. They just charge you for data you use, at a quite competitive price.

I don't think that that's correct. The plan page basically says that it's by-the-100MB pricing. https://fi.google.com/about/plan/

I'm not sure if that's true. Their line about refunding unused data says "you’ll get your unused data credited in dollars and cents" which implies that it may be as fine grained as by the 1MB pricing (if they are actually refunding cents as well)

I don't really understand why they presented it that way, by-the-gig (or 100MB) sounds much more appealing than rollover data. Maybe it's some liability or insurance thing? Cause you basically have to fork over a bunch of money for the first month before the refunds roll over.

(never mind, someone else responded to this question here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9422621)

$10/G is the same price as AT&T. Is there another one that is more expensive?

What I don't get is, what's in this for Sprint and T-Mobile? Currently a user of their network is a customer they "own" -- they deal with that customer directly. Now they have Google sitting between them and the user, which effectively commoditizes their service; Google could switch them out for another network down the road without the user ever knowing or caring. That's great for Google, and probably also great for the user, but not so great for the individual cell providers.

Presumably Google is paying them something to compensate for that, but it still seems dumb -- accepting a little money today at the cost of cutting your own throat in the long term. But then there aren't many providers in the US that aren't dumb, so maybe the long-term threat has just been completely missed by them? Who knows...

They are probably getting excess capacity bought by Google, it's not a bad idea to take easy guaranteed revenue.

My other theory is that they are giving Google a taste of the business that will later lead to Google buying T-Mobile or Sprint outright.

They already do that (allow a 3rd party to resell over their infrastructure) with Ting. They are in a commodity biz.

and virgin mobile and boost (both of which they own) plus a dozen other MVNO cell companies.

I'm tempted to get short Tucows on this, but they've been so awesome that I don't think I'd leave for Google's price point.

It brings the costs of on-boarding, support and sales to 0. At least, from the customer facing perspective. Presumably, they also believe this will bring them a net increase in 'paying users', with larger customer defections coming from the big players (Verizon and AT&T) rather than their own customer base.

I could see how it could be an attractive revenue stream.

That was a question I had: where's the money for Google? Are they in this to force competition only, or do they see this as a viable business model?

For those in the know: how much would they get per subscriber, assuming $20 for the "basics" as they call it, and $10 per Gig for data?

This is likely difficult to calculate, given they are using both T-Mobile _and_ Sprint, and they refund unused data. But I'd be curious nevertheless...

They don't need to make money; they earn more money off of advertisements served.

This plan enables people to be 'more online' while mobile, even in other countries.

Google has always been trying to lower the barriers to the internet (slow javascript -> Chrome (v8 engine), the internet baloons in africa, and now a global cellular/mobile internet service at decent rates).

But no one clicks on ads on mobile.

People consume Google Maps on mobile. Maps is much more the global yellow pages of the 21st century than targeted banner ads or even web search could ever be. I don't know how much Google has started monetizing Maps yet, but the market potential is huge: "OK Google take me to an Italian restaurant" is still much more likely to end with money changing hands than "OK Google take me to a website that talks about pizza". I even think that the primary motivation for creating Android was to secure that spot. Fi would fit very well into that strategy, because Maps gets more powerful when the user is far from home. Therefore, unacceptable international data charges are disproportionally bad for Maps. If fi starts a race to the bottom for data roaming prices, Maps will benefit a lot.

This just happened in Belgium. One of the networks was reselling through the biggest internet and tv provider. It seemed like a sweet deal, since they were getting most of the revenue and had almost none of the support costs. Now the internet provider has bought a competing wireless network, and will move their customers over to that one instead, ending the contract. The original network provider is going to have some tough financial times ahead because they're seeing 20% of their customers walk out the door all at once.

> What I don't get is, what's in this for Sprint and T-Mobile?

Both Sprint and T-Mobile have to build physical infrasture, both to offer basic services (e.g. 3G, talk/text) but to also compete (4G, LTE, etc). Building infrastructure is really expensive. They need land, licences, power, and a network to connect that tower to (assuming it isn't just a relay).

So both networks have this HUGE sunk cost. In an ideal world they would be able to recruit enough users to consume each tower's capacity by 100% at peak. But because they're competing against other networks (with more users) and have to look competitive, they've over-built their network both in scope (e.g. servicing areas with few users) and capacity.

If Sprint and T-Mobile were confident that they could recruit enough users to fill their network they likely wouldn't agree to this deal. Just as AT&T and Verizon haven't. However the likely reality is that both Sprint and T-Mobile are well over capacity in certain areas and every penny that Google can bring in by stealing uses from the big two is just further helps Sprint and T-mobile, even if they just use it to further build out their respective networks.

Additionally: You could frame this as an "illusion of choice." You have Walmart/Target Cellular (Straight Talk/Brightspot) on the low end, T-Mobile themselves in the middle, and Google's Project Fi offering a niche service, but in reality they're all just T-Mobile aimed at a different user base. In all three cases T-Mobile grows, their network grows, and they could kick these brands off any time the contract is up for renew.

PS - T-Mobile actually host just under 30(!) different cellular providers in the US[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_v...

Not only that, but because it switches to the faster provider, and assuming that Project Fi pays out to providers based on percentage of service used, it's much more in Tmo/Sprint's best interests to upgrade their service - considering the switch to their competitor is automatic and based on quality.

That's a pretty big assumption.

Seems like a reasonable assumption to me. I doubt they pay a flat rate to all providers they borrow from with Google charging by the 100 MB.

Even then a good strategy for the networks would be to build capacity on crowded areas where infrastructure is cheap and neglect all other areas for the second carrier.

Google consistently tries to increase competition and make both hardware and network owners into a commodity.

Meanwhile hardware and network owners madly fight to stay relevant, like the aggressive customization of Samsung's android Touchwiz or the various telecoms lobbying against net neutrality.

I don't think that t-mobile and sprint are opposed to commoditization. The expansion of the commoditization of mobile access gives them new ways to compete against at&t and verizon.

The era of multi-year contracts and heavy device subsidies has primarily helped those with large market share maintain it. T-mobile in particular has been pushing to change how the market works and bring an end to some of the ways that customers have been locked in to carriers. I wouldn't be to surprised to seem them support further commoditization.

Upgrading their service is expensive. T-Mobile upgrades, then Sprint has to upgrade to compete, then T-Mobile has to upgrade again, then Sprint...

Instead what's going to happen, T-Mobile and Sprint both agree to offer the same performance, or focus on different regions.

It's like selling slices of pizza on the street. If you're smart, you and your competitor agree to sell at $5/slice. If you drop to $4, sure you'll get more customers for a short period of time, but then your competitor drops to $4, and now you both just cut 20% off your revenue for no reason.

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

Technically, the pizza idea won't work, because more people will enter the market and compete on price. Doesn't apply for telecom since it's all monopolized and new competitors can't enter.

Google is charging a significant markup over T-Mobile's existing rates ($30/month for 5Gb vs $70/month through Gooogle.) So Fi is really only interesting for people doing significant international roaming.

T-Mobile gives you free 128kb/s international data though.

Except T-Mobile already has unlimited international roaming (text/data) on their postpaid plans. (Admittedly, the special $30/month plan costs less than the postpaid plans.)

T-mobile does not have unlimited calls for that plan. It is $30 per month — Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk 100 minutes talk | Unlimited text | First 5GB at up to 4G speeds

Or people whose data usage is substantially below the point where typical carrier plans per-GB rates are optimal.

Where did you get your numbers?

T-Mobile site says 1 GB of 4G data with unlimited talk and text for $50 a month.

5 gigs of 4G data is $70

http://www.t-mobile.com/cell-phone-plans/individual.html

I can confirm, that's the exact plan I have.

There are some cheaper pay-as-you-go plans, but those are actually Walmart's plans using T-Mobile's towers—similar to what Google is doing here.

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

If you scroll down, there's:

$30 per month — Unlimited web and text with 100 minutes talk 100 minutes talk | Unlimited text | First 5GB at up to 4G speeds

I'm considering switch from that plan to Google Fi for Canada data.

No tethering with that plan.

Tethering works for me.

If you install the T-mobile app which lets you know your monthly usage, it claims I have 100 megabytes of tethering data. I rather quickly uninstalled it since it's a pain, but some limited tethering does seem to work for me -- I've only used it occasionally to SSH/mosh, but after a while it does an http redirect to a "No tethering for you!" screen; I assume after that 100mb cap is reached (though I haven't checked)

I just got a T-mobile plan, the one you're referring to, an hour ago, and you are right, I paid $50 for the plan (plus $15 for the card).

Yeah but as a T-Mobile customer myself, that plan which is only available if you purchase the SIM card online or through Walmart, isn't sufficient for my needs. As much as I like being able to call via the Hangouts Dialer WiFi calling is still not of very good quality.

I have this plan too, but pay $15 ($45 total for 5gb) so I can tether to the iPhone.

That's after a $50 charge for unlimited calls and texts, and unlimited edge data. Not that it's a trivial service, but I would save about ~$30-40 a month with no service loss. Probably a service gain, especially if they get AT&T or even a certain CDMA service provider (I can dream).

I've had TMO in the past, and the Google plan is attractive to me for a couple of reasons

* T-Mobile customer service is inconsistent in messaging on the phone, via Facebook, stores

* As a H1B visa holder I am, according to TMO, not able to get a postpaid plan

* Prepaid plan does not work outside of the US

* Prepaid plan has issues receiving short codes from Uber/Bank of America and possibly others - I've spent 8+ hours trying to get it resolved and just ended up giving up.

* I currently use Cricket, due to the 20GB max, but the network is so incredibly slow that it's almost pointless. In NYC I often get at most 100kb/s downstream, when on LTE; that's just no good.

* Spam calls to my Cricket number, and they are unable to do anything about the multiple calls I receive a day

* I use Google Voice already, and it's incredible - except for international texting which they have crappy support for.

* Google Voice has issues with short codes, kinda like TMO prepaid.

Assuming the latter two has been solved with Project Fi + I can get proper network speeds + they filter out spam + automatic transcripts of voicemails (latter two being Google Voice features), then I'm a fan. Can't wait to get it for my Nexus 6.

TMO prepaid and TMO MVNOs now have full short code access.

-citation: I confounded and run a U.S. MVNO.

I think the text issues are due to Google Voice and not T-Mo (I have the GVoice+T-Mo unlimited data combo, and I think I only have short code issues with the GVoice number).

> * As a H1B visa holder I am, according to TMO, not able to get a postpaid plan

What? I'm on a TN and I have a postpaid plan and device payment plan. Your visa status doesn't really affect your phone plan eligibility.

Visa status does not affect your eligibility for payment plans.

However, H1B holders are people having recently arrived to the US, and therefore with 0 credit history. This is what impacts the capability to get a postpaid plan, but after a few months to build it up there should be no problem.

Personally, I find it ridiculous. Having money in the bank as well as a good salary, and not being able to sign up for a 30$ monthly plan; or applying for a credit card and getting either rejected or one with a 200$ credit limit.

I can confirm that Visa status is immaterial for payment plans.

AT&T will let you sign up for a post-paid without a credit history. I didn't want to provide a SSN (even though I have one), so they let me pay an $800 deposit fee - was worth it to avoid the personal information exposure.

The credit card thing is strange - I got a $20,000 one with wells fargo the month after I moved down to the united states in 1996 - on a $50,000 salary working desktop support. I was quite honestly a little shocked - but just went with it.

Credit cards have tightened up a lot post-2007, both rejecting a lot more applicants, and offering much lower initial limits.

Yeah, exactly, visa status has nothing to do with it. It's all credit history, and it shouldn't be very hard to start credit history. My first card was from my CU, preapproved up to $5k since I was a new resident. If that's not an option, there's secured cards all over the marketplace that can jumpstart credit histories.

Or interesting for people who need more than 100 minutes for voice calls (that $30 plan is only 100 minutes voice), who want whatever benefit there is for additional Sprint coverage, or Wi-fi Calling usage with a Nexus 6.

With 4G, you need as much spectrum as possible to provide fast service. Sprint and T Mobile are losing the 4G race pretty hard. Regulators won't let them merge, so this is kind of a way for them to team up. Just my speculation.

Both Sprint and T-Mobile are major providers to MVNO networks -- a significant amount of business they generate comes from carriers who use Sprint/TMo's networks, but handle the customer relations/sales/billing themselves.

To Sprint and T-Mobile, Google is just another MVNO carrier.

No, the big difference here is that Google's MVNO is dynamically switching between multiple providers.

Most MVNOs are just resellers of a single network. They may migrate users between networks as contracts expire, but dynamically balancing between multiple networks is less common. I'm sure many people have thought of this idea before (Apple included) but actually getting multiple carriers to agree to a deal is what's interesting about this.

It's also probable only recently feasible with a mass market phone that can handle all the difference frequencies (and potentially different network types) involved.

If I'm not mistaken, when google bid on the wireless spectrum in 2008, they did so in such a way that extra conditions had to be met by the winner of the auction [1]. One of these conditions is 'Open networks: Third parties (like internet service providers) should be able to interconnect at any technically feasible point in a 700 MHz licensee's wireless network.' They could be taking advantage of this clause to offer the Google Fi service.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_2008_wireless_spe...

Separation of concerns?

Let ye olde business do the infrastructure, and Google - data mining.

Since there is the Nexus 6 requirement acting as a throttle, it allows them to carry out a controlled experiment on a very small sample for this business model. It also gives them some visiblity for Google's future plans, as to be more prepared for them.

Sprint and T-Mobile already have thriving businesses in reselling their bandwidth through mobile virtual network operators (MVNO's, see http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_virtual_network_operat...). You've probably heard of some of them, like Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile. This is because they have excess capacity that they can't sell through their own sales channels.

Boost and Virgin are both owned by sprint, FYI.

Relevance? Verizon and AT&T are killing them.

"...it still seems dumb -- accepting a little money today at the cost of cutting your own throat in the long term. But then there aren't many providers in the US that aren't dumb"

Well, if history proves anything is that most of their investors will prefer an immediate cash-in that will raise the results and the stock price, over the long-term sustainability of the company.

Just as a point of reference, this is about on par with AT&T family share plans - I pay $145 a month for 3 iphones, unlimited text and talk with 10 gigs shared data. With taxes and fees it comes out to right around $160 (which would be the same here if I used all 10 gigs). The down side is that I'm not refunded for any unused data, so I pay that every month. But we use a good chunk of it every month, so this wouldn't be a big savings for me.

I also use an AT&T share plan and they recently started rolling over unused data. So while I'm not getting money back I feel like I'm at least accruing something when I don't get close to my max.

Depending on your plan they might be doing the same for you now too?

> accruing

I think AT&T only rolls over data to the next month, so you aren't actually accruing anything. Unlike T-Mobile, who I believe roll over data for up to 12 months.

Wait really? The email I got from them made it sound like it would roll over forever. I'm gonna have to go read the fine print now. That's a big bummer if you are correct.

Yeah it is only month to month (previous month's unused rolls over to the next month only).

Well that's a bummer. Oh well.

They roll it over but it is the last used and is only rolled over a single month.

Month 1: Get 10 Use 5 = 5 rolled over.

Month 2: Get 10 Rollover 5 Use 5 (of the 10) Lose 5 (already rolled over) = 5 rolled over.

Month 3: Get 10 Rollover 5 Use 5 (of the 10) Lose 5 (already rolled over) = 5 rolled over.

Month 4: Get 10 Rollover 5 Use 5 (of the 10) Lose 5 (already rolled over) = 5 rolled over.

By Month 5, you would think you would have 30 (10 + 5 rolled over from each month) but you only get 15.

AT&T: We'll always find a way to fuck you.

Wow are those smartphones? Somehow I'm paying $100/mo for just my iPhone, 3 gigs of data and unlimited text.

The first phone on a plan costs the same as what you're paying; it's adding phones that's cheap.

With T-mobile I pay $100 (+ ~$8 tax/fees) for 2 smartphones with unlimited everything (data is never cut off or throttled as well). Look into a new plan!

I've been paying $80 + 2 x $10 for 3GB of high-speed data each. After reading this comment, I switched over to unlimited for the same price. Thanks!

Do you have the AT&T family share plan or the family VALUE share plan? Because those figures sound a lot more like the value share plan.

PS - The difference is that with the value plan, phones are no longer "free." You have to have a separate credit line (called: "AT&T Next"). So a phone might be $30/month for 30 months.

I think that is a moot point since you would have to pay the full price of your phone with the Google Fi plan anyway. It seems like the AT&T Next plans are actually a credit line with 0% interest as well; if you multiply out the costs, it's normally within $2-3 of the full cost of the phone anyway (i.e. AT&T isn't profiting off of your phone subsidy). For the sake of apples to apples comparisons, it seems like the Google plan is not a great value add...yet.

It isn't a moot point. Many people reading might assume that that price includes a largely subsidised phone, since that is what people are used to with the big two.

All I am saying is, AT&T's offer no longer does, so it is close to what Google/T-Mobile are doing.

I'm on the "Mobile Share Value 10GB With Rollover Data" - I own all 3 iPhones outright though, so maybe that's why I'm not getting hit for an additional $30 for the phones? Good to know!

On the same plan we've got 5 people at the same price. There's a way to remove subsidized phones from the plan which saved close to 20 dollars per line for us. The downside is flag ships now cost 600, and so we all use either something old and used or a moto g.

old? I bought an LG G3 like two months ago for 350 bucks, came with a case, 64GB sd card, and all the original packaging and stuff. Was also in mint contition (the back of the case was scratched up a bit, but i dont really care for cases)

Anecdotal i gues, but if you look around its quite easy to find new flagship phones for very cheap, especially right around when the new iphones come out and people are clamoring to trade up

Can't really call 350 bucks cheap. But yeah that's why used and hand me down devices are quite common in our family. (We have like three S3s that were all bought by someone else on contract and given to us free by someone upgrading.)

Moto G is my personal preference though I bump into the limitations of that a lot.

Likewise, I pay right at $200/mo for 3 subsidized smartphones with 10GB of shared data and unlimited text/talk on Verizon. We do typically go through 8-9GB of usage monthly too, so it's not much wasted. Fi would be like $15/mo/phone less expensive + that marginal data rebate except... I can get LTE on Verizon nearly everywhere, unlike with T-Mobile and Sprint (especially once you leave metro areas out west) and my phones are subsidized. If I want to subsidize a Nexus 6 through Fi, it's now an additional $27.04/month/phone, or for the 3 of us, $30 more expensive every month than Verizon.

This whole thing makes no sense for me. I go through Cricket Wireless, which is $40/mo for unlimited minutes and 2.5GB of high-speed data (then throttled to pretty much useless). I would say is equal to their plan that has 2GB. I actually only pay $35/mo due to auto-pay, so even cheaper than their $40 and I get more data.

I don't see their offering as competitive at all.

edit: just saw the "plus taxes and fees" of which there is none for me. So, I pay even less now.

I pay $110 per month for 2 iPhones and unlimited talk, text, and data on T-Mobile. I really don't know why anyone wouldn't go with T-Mobile. They don't have contracts, overage fees and have the only unlimited data plan on the market (or at least among the big players).

I could see coverage being an issue if you're in the country but that's not going to be an issue for too much longer.

sprint also has an unlimited plan fwiw.

Whom do I pay, Google?

Yes.

I have Sprint and I live in Alameda Ca - and work in SOMA in SF - It is hands down the worst cellular carrier in the bay area with respect to LTE coverage and speed:

1. They have been claiming they are building new towers for the last THREE years. 2. No coverage AT ALL in any bart tunnel 3. No coverage fully across the bay bridge 4. Spotty coverage in SOMA 5. Google hangouts is utterly useless on mobile 6. three huge dead zones on 880 between Oakland and Menlo park, no coverage across dumbarton, etc.

I wish companies would stop partnering with them for services like this.

I carry a verizon MIFI with me everywhere for work (ops) and I turn it on every time I get on bart - when I am in the car and when I am sitting around in any restaurant / coffee shop / bar for any time because the network sucks so bad.

But that's the whole point of Google Fi. They partnered with Sprint and T-Mobile.

When your in Alameda and Sprint sucks, Google puts you on T-Mobile's network, and you get better data + coverage.

When you head to the rural Midwest, and T-Mobile has EDGE or no service at all, Google can put you back on Sprint LTE and it's at least better than EDGE on T-Mobile.

If this works the way they describe, then you win in both situations -- you get the best of either network, wherever you happen to be.

This is exactly where I'm at. T-Mobile is super fast in Oakland, SF, and even in the BART tunnels, but I just went home to WI and had terrible T-Mobile coverage outside of Milwaukee. So I popped in my Ting SIM (a Sprint MVNO, $6/mo to keep the line open, pay for what you use) and instantly had good coverage.

If you combine two crappy networks, the result won't be as crappy, but it won't necessarily be good either.

In general yes, but TMO and sprint are often the jack and Jill of coverage.

I also live in Alameda and work in SOMA. I have T-Mobile and get excellent coverage in Alameda (definitely improved over the last 4 years), across much of BART, most of the Bay Bridge (not in the tunnnel), and perfect in SOMA. Hangouts works great. One dead spot on 880 approaching 80, but no other empty spots down to San Jose.

Ahhh soooo annoying that it requires a Nexus 6. This sounds so awesome but I do not want a 6" phone. I'm hoping the next Nexus phone will have a smaller variant (and it will undoubtedly support Project Fi)

Agree.

Edit: Looks like the Sony Z3C is a (and the only?) contender!

---

But, I've also given up on that front. The last phone that was (barely) usable one-handed for me was the original Moto X. At this point, there is literally not a single phone on the market that (that I can find):

* Runs a recent version of Android (or iOS)

* Is <= 5" tall

* Has a recent/"fast" CPU/GPU

So, fuck it, time to give in and go with a phablet.

...The iPhone 6 is 4.7" and has the best processor on the market.

4.7" is the screen diagonal. The total height, including the top and bottom border is listed as 5.44". This is according to Apple. http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/

This seems unlikely, as cell phones are generally rectangular and have flat screens.

EDIT: maybe you could try drawing a screen with a 5.44" height and 4.7" diagonal. Euclid will not be your friend.

I think you and the parent are confusing the display size with phone size. The phone height is >5 inches. The display is 4.7 inches diagonally. The device size diagonally will be more than device height.

A height of less than 5 inches limits you to the Motorola Droid Mini, Moto E or the recently released LG Joy. (Those 3 run Lollipop and are from 2013 and later.)

Increasing height to 5.1 inches (well, 130mm), gsmarena.com shows almost a dozen phones that suit your wishes.

(Personally, I'm still not happy about having to give up on having a hardware QWERTY keyboards on my phone :/ )

+1 for hardware keyboards. In many ways I miss my clunky G1.

Sony Z3 Compact. Is 5.01 inches tall, but your original Moto X was 5.09 and you seemed to like it fine. Fast/recent specs. Runs a recent version of Android.

Nice! Not sure how I missed that one, maybe it's the way to go...

Also waterproof! It's a pretty cool feeling to rinse your phone under the tap the first time you do it.

Another vote for the Sony Z3C. I'm an avowed Sony hater, but I'm liking mine.

I'm really hoping for a Nexus 5 2015. It's the best phone, for me, I've encountered including this generation of phones. Otherwise I'm probably going to have to get a Moto G 2nd gen if they come out with the LTE edition.

It's just the first phone they support due to the radio support. I expect they will have other phones later in the year.

Probably that Nexus 5 reboot people are talking about.

>or find the video incredibly unhelpful

Watched the video via reddit...NICE smooth style...still not idea wtf they're on about though. Oh well...hn comments will know. Sure enough...top comment is a comment expecting people to arrive here confused. So much for clear google marketing.

I've been really excited about this upcoming announcement, but I'm disappointed at the pricing.

I used 15GB last month, so I'd pay more than double what I pay now for "unlimited" data.

A lot depends on how well the WiFi network works. If their WiFi network is good enough then your data might stretch a lot further.

> automatically switches you to the "fastest" network available.

It'll be interesting to see what type of impact this has on battery life / reliability.

> refunding data

I'm surprised they didn't go with data roll over or just lower price per GB. Refunds add a layer of guilt / buyers remorse to the process. I suspect a lot of customers will cross a 1GB boundary and feel obligated to use less data to lower their bill.

Will it ever support iPhones? Obviously, as the competitor, they have some incentive to play by Apple rules and only support devices running their preferred OS, but at the same time, they make such a big deal over the open protocol of Android, plus have a general strategy of "get everyone using Google as much as possible," that I'd assume they'd eventually roll out to iOS (unless the issue is on Apple's end)

I suspect no. iOS users pull down far more data. And it's Apple versus Google. Not going to happen.

Do you have any figures about iOS vs Android data usage? That's a perspective I had not heard.

So, it does exactly the same thing my Nexus one did 5+ years ago before they bought companies and shut them down?

if you don't know what i'm talking about, android got a SIP client working pretty fast from the comunity, and the best provider was using gizmo5. which google bought one year before launching the nexus one. Then on year after launching nexus one, they pulled an apple on it and shut down the service.

then they launched google voice. which was a we-own-all-your-data-in-the-cloud version of gizmo5, but it was nice because they gave me lots of free stuff that almost never worked (phone dialer integration, sms, etc). until the clients they released became a piece of garbage (the last build is still from 2012, then they started to force the features trhu google plus and more recently via hangouts)

Google Voice was from their GrandCentral acquisition.

Gizmo5 was just SIP.

The video looks like something directly out of the TV show "Silicon Valley".

The $20 base charge with "unlimited talk and text" makes me feel like I'd be throwing away money in exchange for nothing. Unlimited only makes sense if I'm going to use a reasonable amount of it. These days, I talk barely 20 minutes a month, and I haven't sent a single text so far this month. Apps that use data are rapidly replacing both of them, and people who use a Nexus 6 with Google are likely to be at the forefront of this trend.

I would really prefer a much lower base rate with zero talk/text and reasonable "overage" charges. Even at the old system of $.30/minute and $.25/message, It would probably come out cheaper for me. The overage charges will also encourage me to use more data instead of talk/text, and isn't that what Google wants me to do anyway?

(My mother is with a South Korean MVNO and pays a $0 base rate, with "overage" charges at $.0018 per second of outgoing calls and $.02 per outgoing text. Crazy, huh? Pay-as-you-go data is more expensive with her carrier, but she doesn't need much data.)

All in all, apart from easy international roaming, I don't see anything special in this offer. It's the same old American carrier racket, only more expensive. I expected more from Google.

Ummm...how is this different from every other cell provider ever? Like where can you currently get anywhere near this level of access for less than $20?

That's the point. This is Google, so I expected something different from every other American cell provider ever.

At the very least, I would have expected their plans to encourage people to prefer data to talk/text.

There are a variety of options:

FreedomPop provides 500mb a month free data and you can pre-pay monthly for more data with lower overage costs. You do get sprint only.

Republic Wireless already does the Wifi calling and switching and unlimited data.

Ptel sells prepaid data at a flat $.10/megabye (atleast $10 / 60 days) and there are others in that range.

There really isn't anything new here.

If they can create a global network of networks where I can bring my own device, I'd be interested. The are other resellers that offer

Data and density is an issue in the US.

Compare the size of South Korea, and the size of the US, that's why it's easier to blanket South Korea with data networks.

Google is offering ways to more seamlessly switch WiFi networks and make using a public trusted WiFi instantly.

The fact is that in the US there are a lot of coverage gaps and places where a specific type of service has very bad coverage (2G or 3G). Without cell data Google Maps won't work (1 year ago, might be better now).

We don't know if it will be useful yet, it might be great, it might be nothing special.

They are also offering financing on a Nexus 6, I haven't done the math to see if that's worth it (doubt it), but they'll probably be making a good amount of money off of that.

Most importantly it will put pressure on Verizon and ATT to lower prices and improve the value of the service, just like Google Fiber does it areas it is available in.

USA only, too.

The video is worth watching just to see how not-worth-watching the video is.

    > Pay one rate for data around the world
    >
    > In 120+ countries, data usage costs the same $10 per GB
    > as it does in the US (data speed is limited to 256kbps/3G).
    > Check email, get directions, and keep in touch with friends
    > and family when on your trip. Also, call around the world
    > for 20c per minute and send unlimited international texts.

This sounds incredible. Roaming cellular transmission costs are enormous. It's routine to pay several dollars per minute for voice and per megabyte for data. If the data roaming is really no-strings attached, this is a must-buy for me (if it ever becomes available in the UK).

FWIW, T-Mobile in the US already has the exact same offering [1]. Their plan has free texts and 2g data in 120+ countries. Calls cost 20 cents per minute.

[1] http://www.t-mobile.com/optional-services/roaming.html

I think this is offering 3g rather than 2g, but I wasn't aware of that, thanks!

It seems like UK carriers are lagging behind rather badly in this regard.

I'm pretty sure 3 in the UK has a package where you don't pay anything extra for roaming (http://www.three.co.uk/Support/Roaming_and_International).

3 offer the ability to use your allowances in 18 countries at no extra charge:

http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home

It's not as many countries, but with 3 you can get unlimited data at a fraction of the cost (I currently pay £15/month with 3 for unlimited data, 5000 3 to 3 minutes, 5000 texts and 2000 minutes to other networks).

Currently using this in Australia (and Telstra have fantastic coverage). I was amazed it was available here. It feels too good to be true!

Likewise, although I'm finding that Telstra throttles me quite a lot. Turns out you can use any network in Australia (with no roaming fee from 3), so I've manually switched to Optus and my speed has dramatically increased.

Yes, but 2g data is barely if at all usable.

in most countries i've been to (UK, Canada, India) 2G data came in handy for things like navigation. note that 2g is part of your plan and it does not cost anything extra.

nevertheless, they also have an option to upgrade to 3G data for a fee ($10 or so).

Works enough for iMessages, Google Maps, Uber, online banking apps, booking hostels, hotels, airlines, etc.

Yeah, but other telcos in other countries don't have that offer. So a universal cheap data rate will be game changer.

I am on T-Mobile and travelled outside the US late last year.

First off, I just want to say, the "free tier" of international data is extremely appreciated for two important reasons:

- Overage is literally impossible (i.e. no "bill shock").

- If you don't wish to pay, you get "something" for nothing.

So, now, the "bad." The reality is that T-Mobile's free tier is incredibly slow like "my 56K modem was faster than this" slow. A single modern web-site can literally take so long to load that my phone would fall asleep and then cut off the connection (meaning I'd have to start all over).

It is really only useful for push notifications and to check your email if you're really patient. Even for reading sites like Reddit, it would drive you up the wall. Looking at images (e.g. imgur) is a no-go and YouTube is definitely not even plausible.

Now, if you pay, you get more data per dollar than you do on most other big US networks and you legitimately get 4G speeds in many places (at least I certainly did). So if you pay you wouldn't even know you were abroad. And when you run out of paid data, you drop down to the slow speed again rather than being cut off (which is nice, so you feel safe to use 100% of your paid data with no risk).

So, to me, T-Mobile's free tier doesn't really change the formula for international travel. It just solves overage/bill shock and gives you some basic notifications and maybe email. Those aren't things to be sniffed at, they're legitimately nice, but people should manage their expectations.

PS - Protip: Restart your phone every single time you change countries. My phone got "confused" and would refuse to connect until I restarted. We did a cruise so a new country was daily, and I missed a day of data because I thought that country simply wasn't supported (rather than it being a phone problem).

Does the slow connection work for background reception of email? In that case, one would never wait interactively for email, only be notified when email had already been received.

Basically, it's enough to whatsapp someone to meet up. I thought it was incredibly valuable during the world cup last year.

Where did you travel to? When we went to France, I got great speeds (almost 3G-ish) roaming on several providers there (IIRC, SFR and Bouygues) in all sorts of locations, including very remote ones.

In the end, we paid $40 (all for calls @ $0.20/min) for 3 weeks of near-normal usage with 2 iPhones.

To me that's very much a game changer - previously I paid double that same amount as an accidentally access charge (forgot to turn off roaming on my AT&T phone). Not to mention I had to spend 30m with the AT&T rep to configure our accounts so we wouldn't get charged $2/min prior to our trip.

> Where did you travel to?

It was this cruise but in reverse (Aruba last, cayman first):

When I paid for data I got good 3G or 4G speeds. With free data it was incredibly slow, like sub-56K modem slow, even at the same ports as the 4G speeds with paid.

Here's a YouTube video someone else took which accurately represents my experience:

https://youtu.be/PISKCPFu3iU?t=26s

It takes a minute to load Gizmoto's homepage.

If you don't mind your connection being proxied there's always Opera Mini.

I have to echo this comment. I recently travelled to Japan and Singapore, and I managed really well on the 3G speeds I got from T-mobile's free roaming. I'll admit I didn't spend my time there streaming youtube videos, but I did use instagram and occasionally google maps, although it was slow for maps sometimes (then again, maps is slow here in the US too, it's most likely my SG SIII not playing well with the latest and greatest maps version), moreover, I tethered from time to time. At the end, I paid a pittance (something like $2) because I had to make one call. For me, T-mobile's free roaming was a godsend.

I usually cache google maps offline when traveling to another country: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en

Absolutely correct about restarting your phone. I even restart mine twice after I change SIM cards (not a T-Mobile guy).

What's your experience with Google Maps at the free 2G speeds? That would be my first question when it comes to travel.

I used TMO's free international 2G (with a 2013 Moto X) in Japan for two weeks. Maps was not a problem. It was slower then I was used to over 4G, but certainly fast enough to look up transit directions and search for places.

I was very satisfied and would gladly use them again. Having transit directions made spontaneous travel much easier.

> What's your experience with Google Maps at the free 2G speeds?

"Unpleasant." What I'd strongly recommend is to download the map using offline maps before you leave. If you wait for Google Maps to download the data over the 2G/free tier you'll be in for a very long (10+ minute) wait.

I did not do offline maps before I left, but mostly we were on tours so we didn't really need them. But if I was e.g. exploring a city or doing something on my own, you'd definitely want to do offline maps if you wanted to use Google Maps on their free tier.

Worth noting that not every country lets you offline a map. There's a list of countries you can offline a map for here: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650347?hl=en

It's a long list, but there's some notable / surprising absences (e.g. Brazil, Spain).

Fun thing to keep in mind when traveling in mainland China: maps for use outside China are shifted by a few hundred meters, presumably in a lame attempt to confuse an invading army.

https://polastre.com/2013/02/what-the-map/

I have not run into this issue in China, perhaps this has changed since.

I was in South Africa recently, and got a consistent 256kbps using the roaming data on t-mobile. It's not 4G, but it's significantly better than sub 56k.

The T-Mobile plan only offers you international data if you pass a credit check. I applied twice, once by phone and once in-person at a store. I got rejected twice. I have excellent credit and suspect the issue is something stupid like my first name being misspelled (something I experience a lot). However T-Mobile employees immediately enter stone wall mode and it's completely impossible to debug the issue. Probably it's a company policy that they should never ever start discussing failed credit checks with would-be customers.

Anyway, I'll be damn glad if an alternative appears as it'll give me an additional chance to qualify.

I have this plan and never did a credit check. Maybe I was grandfathered in though. I've had t mobile for 2 years now.

T-Mobile uses the same name ("Simple plan") for their different offerings, one of which is international roaming with a credit check. I tried to get this plan, and T-Mobile wasted hours of my time and money on satellite phone calls to them and royally pissed me off with their extremely incompetent support. Apparently I was given the wrong plan when I signed up initially in the US, and then they tried changing my plan to the correct one, but it never worked. I wouldn't touch T-Mobile with a 10 foot pole.

Is $10/GB and $0.2/min normal within the US? I'm not familiar with American (non-roaming) pricing.

For comparison:

In Germany I have an LTE data plan for my tablet where I pay €24.99 for 7.5GB (~$3.57/GB), the lowest plan being €6.99 for 1GB (~$7.50/GB). Unlimited calls in Germany including 1GB data would cost me €19.99/month (~$21.48) at the same provider and unlimited text in Germany would be an additional €4.99/month (~$5.36), otherwise texts are €0.09 each (~$0.10). Many German providers offer pre-paid (or post-paid) plans with €0.09/minute and €0.09/text.

My current plans work out as follows:

Tablet with 7.5GB LTE data plan: €24.99 / ~$26.83 (~$3.57/GB)

Smartphone with 1GB LTE data, 200 minutes and 200 texts: €11.90 / ~$12.87

Overages per minute: €0.09 / ~$0.10

Overages per text: €0.09 / ~$0.10

Overages for data: free (at significantly reduced speed; "high-speed" extra data can be added for €3-9/GB depending on the plan and provider)

The next closest plan for my smartphone would be 1GB LTE data, 400 minutes and 400 texts at €15.90 / ~$17.07, the difference works out to €0.01 (~$0.01) per minute or text.

I'm using my own devices, so the plans don't include the cost of the devices themselves.

My mobile phone bill over the past months mostly ranged from €14-20 and my tablet bill was mostly fixed at €24.99 (turns out 7.5GB is generally sufficient unless I use Netflix outside WiFi a lot).

Also, tethering isn't a problem either, but obviously roaming is excessively expensive even in the EU.

Not sure about the per minute pricing, but the data cost is low.

In Estonia I pay €12 for 5 GB or €17 for 10 GB or €23 for 20 GB. Additional 1 GB at €2 or 3 GB €4. Tethering always included.

A carrier in germany has to build 26 times less towers than a carrier in the US, because germany is more than 26 times smaller than the US.

I would think the increased expenditure of 26 times more towers would increase the cost of plans.

Europe also never had the culture of carrier subsidized phones, and so were never accustomed to paying more in monthly fees in exchange for low to no cost upgrades of hardware.

Tethering varies by carrier in the US - Verizon is legally obligated to allow tethering due to the result of a lawsuit, so they do not charge any extra for this, i believe t-mobile also does not charge for tethering, but it is not related to a lawsuit AFAIK

A final point is that pricing for data is fundamentally different in europe as i understand it. Most plans i am familiar with in europe tier data prices by speed - in the US almost all plans get the fastest speeds available, but it is tiered but amount of data used. You cannot pay for faster speeds on a typical US plan, only for greater amounts of data. The european side of that may have changed, as its been a year or so since i was last in europe looking into this

> Europe also never had the culture of carrier subsidized phones, and so were never accustomed to paying more in monthly fees in exchange for low to no cost upgrades of hardware.

I live in the Netherlands and subsidized phones are the norm here, don't think other countries are that different.

My experience in NL was differentiated pricing based upon the phone you got - ie it was subsidized by financing. In the states it was a massive flat out discount that wasn't explicit financing.

There are considerably more providers than actual carriers in Germany. The way frequencies are assigned in Germany probably plays into this, but in a nutshell: many if not most people don't have contracts with the actual network operators (i.e. carriers) but with companies that are merely service providers. There are a lot of spin-off companies offering discounted monthly or pre-paid plans contracts compared to the expensive 2 year plans offered by their parent companies (e.g. Congstar is a subsidiary of Telekom Deutschland).

What you say about subsidized phones is patently false. I don't recall unsubsidized phones being a thing at all in Germany when mobile phones first became popular. Even today many if not most Germans seem to prefer subsidized phones -- in my experience buying your phone separately is only common in the more tech savvy or higher end markets, although the growing popularity of discounted month-to-month mobile plans may be changing that.

AFAIK tethering and jailbreaking/rooting is, generally speaking, always legal in Germany. For subsidized phones things can be different if you're not actually purchasing the phone but only leasing it (because it isn't your property and therefore you're not allowed to modify it), but I think these days most contracts have you actually purchase the phone. Not sure whether this is due to market demand, but I think there's also a decline in carrier branded phones, so it might simply be that.

Except for pre-paid/post-paid (i.e. no fixed plan, pay-as-you-go) contracts, I think all German providers offer unlimited low-speed data with a varying amount of high-speed data. As far as I can tell, most if not all providers these days offer their fastest speeds as "high-speed" on all contracts with only the amount of data being the difference, not tiered speed caps (this definitely used to be different).

So, yeah, your information seems to be a bit out of date. At least with regard to Germany -- I don't know enough about other EU countries to say anything about them.

Just to clarify the "spin-off" companies are called mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). We have a lot of them in the UK too, but in our case they are usually seperate companies (e.g. the Tesco supermarket has its own mobile brand which runs on the O2 network). Strangely they are usually cheaper than the parent companies too - anyone know how the financials of that work?

In Germany we have supermarket mobile brands, too. They're usually just white-label services provided by other brands (e.g. ALDI Talk is owned by E-Plus, which is an actual carrier).

In fact, E-Plus itself seems to own multiple brands: BASE, Blau, ALDI Talk, Simyo, VIVA, JambaSIM and AY YILDIZ. So they're effectively just discount brands with different target audiences (e.g. AY YILDIZ offers discounted calls to Turkey and is marketed at the large Turkish-speaking minority).

I don't think E-Plus offers any mobile plans under its own brand at all, actually. Their own website links to BASE, which is their "regular" (non-discount) brand. They used to offer plans themselves in the past, though.

Confusingly there's also mobilcom-debitel (again owning several brands) which doesn't seem to be affiliated with any network operator and offers separate plans for the different networks. I think they did own some frequencies at some point and eventually sold them off, so that might at least explain why they exist at all (although I'm not sure how they can compete with the actual operators' own brands).

There are only four actual network operators in Germany: Telekom Deutschland (D1), Vodafone (D2), E-Plus (E1) and Telefónica Germany / O2 (E2). The frequencies for GSM, UMTS and LTE were auctioned off (D1/D2/E1/E2 referring to the original GSM frequencies of the D (GSM-900) and E (DCS-1800) networks).

There's actually a fifth operator on GSM: Deutsche Bahn (German railway). But they're obviously not in the phone business.

>There are considerably more providers than actual carriers in Germany

The same is true in the US, they are called MVNO's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_vi...

>What you say about subsidized phones is patently false

You are most likely talking about carriers allowing people to finance their phones in europe. Where you can pay an additional 20 euros a month to get the new iphone or whatever.

This is not at all what i'm talking about.

In the US, when you open a cell phone contract, you get a new phone at a discounted price. You sign a contract and you get to choose from the carriers selection of phones, older phones being completely free, newest phones costing 200 dollars. The rest of the cost of the phone is hidden inside of the cost of the plan itself. There is no line item for how much you are paying for the phone each month, it is simply part of the pricing of the service itself. When your phone has been completely paid off, you will never know because your plans price will not change.

In europe, you finance phones, when they are paid off you stop paying for the phone and you then own the phone. your bill goes down. This is not at all the same behavior as the subsidized phone system in the US.

>German providers offer unlimited low-speed data with a varying amount of high-speed data

This is what im talking about, this does not exist in the US. There is no variation of speeds, you either have data or you dont.

There is some subversion by carriers using 'throttling' where they slow certain lines down to a crawl when the carrier decides they've used too much data for the month, but that is by no means a part of how plans are priced.

>So, yeah, your information seems to be a bit out of date

admittedly so, i haven't been in europe for more than a week since 2013 - and have never spent much time in germany

It is also throttling in the EU (At least in NL). If I pay for an 'unlimited' data plan it's usually something like 2GB at 4G and then "2G" speeds (64kbps) after that. It's just throttling, as your phone remains connected at "4G".

Now many providers have dropped the "unlimited 2G" data claim and just stating the rate limit after you use your high-speed bucket.

Maybe Finland is an exception here, but they are definitely tiered by speed, with no 'buckets' of data - Finland is the only country I've personally purchased an actual plan in, I've only used prepaid plans elsewhere in europe.

https://kauppa.saunalahti.fi/#!/matkapuhelinliittymat https://www.dna.fi/liittymat

> In the US, when you open a cell phone contract, you get a new phone at a discounted price.

This has definitely been a thing in Germany in the past. In fact, I don't think I've seen ever the "pay $(x+y)/month for 24 months for the plan and phone, then pay only $x/month" model. Usually after 24 months you'd be offered a new phone (again for "free" or a radically "discounted" price). This may have changed since I stopped paying attention to long-term plans but you're wrong in thinking we never had what you have in the US.

> There is no variation of speeds, you either have data or you dont.

We also had hard data caps very early on. We just replaced that with "unlimited" plans with a cap on "high-speed" data at some point.

That said, the low-speed data might as well not be available at all -- most people I know buy extra if they hit their high-speed cap. It's barely sufficient for checking your e-mail.

Europeans never paid for speed, that's completely incorrect. There's no tradeoff - mobile phone usage in Europe is simply much, much cheaper because there's not the same quadrupoly that exists in the US (thanks to government intervention and much stricter competitivity laws).

That's an interesting attempt to justify the price, but it completely fails to take into account that simply calculating area is nowhere near accurate for the number of towers - it depends on where people live. Fortunately people live close together, so towers don't need to cover every square inch of the country.

If you look up the number of towers, you'll find that the US has roughly 120,000 mobile base stations, while the UK has 23,000. (Despite the fact that the UK is ~30 time smaller than the US). So your argument does not hold.

On another note, I'll never understand how people think that you get "low to no cost upgrades" of hardware. You don't. You're literally paying _more_ to upgrade your phone/get a new phone in the long run, than just buying one outright. The reason you can buy an iPhone for 99 USD is because you'll be paying ~27 USD "extra" for the next 2 years, which is exactly the same as if you had just spent 600 outright and saved that amount (or even more, 99% of the time) over the next 2 years. There's no "subsidization" going on, if anything, you're subsidizing the company.

Current stats show 205,000k[1] towers - not base stations, I'd estimate closer to 410,000-840,000 mobile base stations. Figure most of those are not all four carriers on each site, some are just one carrier, some are all four, and if I were to pick a single number, 585,000. Previously, I'd suggest that you can really only compare the US with Canada, Australia in terms of population density and spread.

[1] http://www.statisticbrain.com/cell-phone-tower-statistics/

> Europeans never paid for speed, that's completely incorrect.

https://www.dna.fi/liittymat https://kauppa.saunalahti.fi/#!/matkapuhelinliittymat

I understand that theres a lot of variety in Europe, but to say that tiers by speed doesn't happen is factually incorrect.

>There's no tradeoff

I never said there was, I am simply pointing out differences in how the markets are set up and function in these vastly different continents

>there's not the same quadrupoly that exists in the US

This is true, this is the biggest problem with the US cellular market today

>That's an interesting attempt to justify the price

I'm not trying to justify anything, just explain some of the differences.

>but it completely fails to take into account that simply calculating area is nowhere near accurate for the number of towers - it depends on where people live

It depends on hundreds of factors - population density, building density, building materials, types of cellular radios used (CDMA vs GSM have different ranges), terrain, interference, number of carriers, etc

The difference in land area is definitely a factor - i never said it was the only one. My mistake was obviously saying '26 times more towers', which i admit was a careless thing to say, but i think it still made my point. The US has significantly more infrastructure than any single european country, in part due to its much larger coverage area.

>Fortunately people live close together, so towers don't need to cover every square inch of the country.

Much truer in Europe than in the US - US: 32.65/sq km UK: 262/sq km [1]

>If you look up the number of towers, you'll find that the US has roughly 120,000 mobile base stations

I see 205,000[2] - which puts the US at ~10 times the towers of the UK

>So your argument does not hold. do you think that the cost of ~10 times more infrastructure is not part of the higher prices in the US compared to the UK? My argument was that having to spend much greater amounts on infrastructure is one of the reasons for a price difference, i didn't say it was the only reason or explanation just that it's worth noting.

>I'll never understand how people think that you get "low to no cost upgrades" of hardware.

This is just the psychology of purchasing. People don't like spending a lot of money at once and would prefer to spread costs out over time - I completely agree that the 'subsidized' model is garbage, but i haven't been able to convince a single family member to switch to buying phones outright no matter how many times i show them the lower cost after the full two years. Of course by low to no cost i meant when you walk into the provider's location after two years, you walk out with a new phone that you paid very little for during that transaction. It doesn't seem to matter to most people that they end up paying more than the phones full retail cost over the course of two years.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_de... [2]http://www.statisticbrain.com/cell-phone-tower-statistics/

Finland accounts for around 1% of the EU population, that's hardly enough to make claims about "Europe". Speed tiers don't happen in most countries (I can say this with certainty for the UK and Germany).

There are HUGE, VAST swathes of the US with zero coverage whatsoever - there's literally 2 million square miles with no population or coverage - that's nearly 58% of the lower 48. So that'd reduce your ratio to 13 times. Then you figure that the US population is 4 times that of Germany, so saying that it's 26 times more painful for a US carrier to tower the US than a German is entirely inaccurate.

I live in a country with low population density and mobile is quite cheap here IMO. I have an unlimited data plan from an MVNO for around $10. It's limited to 1 Mbit/s though (but it's 4G), and no phone is included.

When it comes to carrier subsidizing, we actually have both non-subsidized and subsidized, as well as "semi-subsidized" (e.g. pay half price of the phone, but you can't change operator for 2 years).

The downside IMO with mobile in Europe is that we have so many small countries, so occasionally you have to leave your country (=roaming fees) for some reason.

Roaming is almost non-existent in the US now among the four major networks. Not sure if you mean domestic or international though.

I pay about $65 / month with AT&T, for unlimited talk & text, and 5gb of LTE data (10gb shared on a two person family plan). That includes the cost of the device.

What is domestic roaming? I guess you mean state-to-state within the US? I wouldn't have thought that that would have ever been a thing (at least not after domestic long distance calls stopped being a thing).

I always hear Americans say they have unlimited talk and text. Is this really the most popular option or do most plans just include it by default? Might explain why American mobile plans always sound so incredibly expensive to me (i.e. "pay for what you use" a la Ting is actually a disruptive idea in that market because everybody overpays by default).

Domestic roaming is using a (domestic) network not belonging to the users contracted carrier.

In France we have a €19.99/mo plan with unlimited talk for domestic (land and mobile) and a huge selection of international countries (land), unlimited SMS/MMS, and 20Go of Data (yes, twenty). That plan can go down to €15.99/mo if you also go with this carrier for your home's broadband access.

That same carrier (called "Free mobile") offers a €2.00/mo plan for 2h talk, unlimited SMS/MMS and 50Mo data, which is €0/mo (free) if you're subscribed to their broadband.

And if the contract did not change, tethering is included. In addition with their ADSL offering you're allowed to host a server at home on your ADSL connection (which others did explicitly forbid when I chose Free over them a few years ago.)

EDIT: typo

$20 get's you a gig of 4G data in UK.

Probably more in other countries.

I think what's interesting here is that Apple tried to do something similar years ago and carriers revolted.

Let me join the international domestic mobile plans pricing party.

In Latvia we have unlimited calls and messages for 9.95€. Add unlimited 2G/3G/4G data for 9.99€. That's roughly 20€ for unlimited everything. Tethering is not disabled, however, you could get downgraded to slower speeds for abuse (torrents & alike; never heard of this being enforced).

Roaming charges in while in EU are regulated at 0.19€ per minute, messages for 0.09€ per minute. Data is still expensive, though - 0,20€ per MB. Mobile operators provide roaming data packages, which might lower your data bill to 0.14€ per MB.

There is a upcoming EU roam-like-home regulation, which would mean that you never pay more than at home for anything - including data.

"We refund the data you don't use" is basically a way of saying "you pay by the megabyte for the data you do use" -- which is actually really great, I've been frustrated that everyone's settled on "all-you-can-eat" data as the standard, it doesn't align incentives well at all.

And they really are refunding it: if you use 1.2GB per month, it doesn't matter whether you sign up for 2, 5, or 10GB, your bill comes out exactly the same.

That's a good point. It's one thing to offer "unlimited data" for a fixed price - which is about ideal for a consumer, but that doesn't exist anymore. What you get is a fixed amount of data for a fixed price. But the provider has an incentive to make you use as little as possible, to increase its profits. But if instead you get the data returned to you, or you pay a reasonable amount by the MB, then the provider has an incentive to make you use as much data as possible. That could mean giving you a much faster service for example.

Also, notice that they're not charging extra for tethering, or care how many devices you tether to. As far as they're concerned, data is data because you're paying for it.

Why would they charge extra for tethering?

Is that a thing in some countries?

It's a thing in the US, because "computer data" is better and more expensive than "phone data".

Amazing. How do they tell whether you're tethering, though? If you're using your own smartphone, I mean.

They don't, but on-phone software (stock iOS, as a prominent example) enforces the policy.

I was furious when I bought a Nexus 7 (first version) and found out that tethering wasn't available on the device (although there was no obvious reason it shouldn't be and rooting the device would have allowed me to enable it). Running into this on stock devices seems absurd.

There's various ways:

Some rely on the device itself to enforce it, but that's obviously fragile if you can bring your own device.

Some check the TTL of your packets when they enter the carrier's network, because tethering is at least one more hop and so even if your computer's OS and phone's OS agree on what TTL starts at, the TTL will still be different than expected for your device's platform. Obviously this can still be mitigated by adjusting your TTL, but outside of software that'll handle this for them, that's already beyond a lot of customers.

Some even take the route of only checking HTTP traffic, and detecting tethering based on User-Agent, but I think a lot have abandoned that because it doesn't catch other protocols, and is easily bypassed even on HTTP.

Won't the new FCC net neutrality rules effectively prevent tethering charges when they go into effect? Specifically, since providers will no longer be allowed to do anything to interfere with tethering, any tethering fees will be completely optional to the consumer.

> It's one thing to offer "unlimited data" for a fixed price - which is about ideal for a consumer, but that doesn't exist anymore.

Yes it does; both Sprint and T-Mobile offer it (alongside their respective non-unlimited plans). The fact that Google Fi doesn't despite using those two carriers as its "partners" is incredibly disappointing.

To Be Clear, they offer it, but T-Mobile will throttle your speeds after a certain number of megs. Sprint also used to do so, but apparently has stopped doing so due to a need to try to get folks to at least check them out.

T-Mobile does offer an unlimited LTE plan.

T-Mobile also offers an unthrottled unlimited plan. Theirs is priced a little lower than Sprint's.

If bandwidth is scarce there's always an incentive to go towards "pay for what you use" schemes, though.

It's like an insurance "death spiral"[1] -- if one provider provides fixed-cost internet (or wide "bands"), the customers who use the least data will subsidise those who use the most. If another provider offers them internet at the true marginal rate, they'll move there. After they've moved on, the fixed-cost internet provider has to increase its rates, rinse and repeat.

Of course, customers may prefer to be insulated in the months they use more data than usual, and moving between providers may not be free, or they may just not care at all...

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_spiral_(insurance)

> If bandwidth is scarce

That's a big "if". And even if bandwidth is indeed scarce, then that's the problem that needs to be solved by building out one's network; punishing users for using the network is not viable in the long term (especially when folks like T-Mobile, as I've mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, are able to offer both throttled and unthrottled unlimited data plans without issue on a network that's probably nowhere near as built-out as those of AT&T and Verizon).

> Of course, customers may prefer to be insulated in the months they use more data than usual

This is exactly why the low-data users in networks like T-Mobile's and Sprint's typically don't mind subsidizing the high-data users (not that they're really subsidizing a whole lot, seeing as their respective unthrottled unlimited data plans cost more than their respective throttled unlimited and capped data plans). Having an unlimited data plan (throttled or otherwise) provides the peace-of-mind that you won't ever be charged extra based on your data usage, and that's a pretty big win for a lot of customers (especially when coupled with T-Mobile's data rollover).

The transaction cost is often higher for pay as you go (Did I use up my cap? I hope next bill wont be too large! Need to remember to top up soon).

Those who use the least, can then feel that it is easier to slightly overpay for fixed pricing.

I just wish it had peak/non-peak pricing. Even something as basic as free nights.

Or better yet, some sort of dynamic pricing when, say, you're on a crowded subway platform. You'd really want solid software integration for that, though, so the user isn't unpleasantly surprised by it.

Type "2.5" to accept surge pricing.

But I want my email and push notifications to happen the background without paying extra. Unless it's been a while, then I probably am willing to pay extra. Seems awfully tricky.

Doesn't seem too tricky to me. Email and push notifications are almost zero data; go ahead and let them pay full price.

Download updates and podcasts at 4AM.

Maybe ask before doing interactive high-bandwidth things, depends on user preference.

I think customers would be pissed about never knowing when data will suddenly surge in price, even if you warn them. It would also kill the user experience. And stuff like background updates and push messages would be a pain.

I'm sure the usage pattern is steady enough to make a pretty good model.

I have a lot of problems with surge pricing in general, not the least of which (in this example) is that it creates two classes of 'net users: those with enough disposable income to probably not care about surge pricing ever and those for whom it's a burden. Yes, that's a reflection on larger societal issues, but it's still there.

Worse, surge pricing is often a distraction for nearly everyone. IMO, it's not ethical to implement surge pricing without allowing a user some mechanism to opt-out of it and to understand why they aren't getting bandwidth at that time. But having put that stake in the ground, the UX now requires that the user waste mental decision energy on ... business bullshit[1].

Last not far from least, it aligns the incentives of carriers against providing enough coverage to handle capacity. We're learning how to handle higher density wireless scenarios (cf. articles on stadium and other heavy-use event network systems). Would we rather incentivize trickle-down of these systems into high-traffic public areas (e.g. commuter zones), or just further line the pockets of a few near-monopolist carriers at our own expense?

[1] This relates to why users rightly don't like metered billing -- it creates decision pressure. A payment structure that alleviates use of decision energy is a value add.

How do you feel about services that require $650 phones?

Also, discounts when network utilization is low?

How do you feel about services that require $650 phones?

Broadly speaking, few do. There are a lot of cheap Android phones out there.

This service requires a $650 phone.

It does for now. Whether or not the tech filters down into other products, this exact phone won't still be $650 in two years.

Sure, but there's no reason it will always be the case. It makes sense to start with a limited number of hardware devices, and only ones under your control.

Yeah, I'm not confused about that.

But the comment I replied to was concerned that some users of the service might have more disposable income than others, which is an odd thing to bring to the table when discussing a convenience service that has a $650 entry price (I don't have a smartphone, so I'm not being a ridiculous hypocrite describing it that way).

I'm pretty skeptical of price controls, I never expect them to do me any good. The argument presented there is that surge pricing is bad because some people can't afford it. The other side of the coin is that if you ban surge pricing, you make it more difficult to charge less at other times.

In the context of the wider Net Neutrality conversation (Connectiveness Neutrality?), I'm glad it's so simple. $20 + $10/gb across the board is very sane, fair, and makes no assumptions about who you are, how you're using it, or what you're using it for.

I do think we eventually need to move to more flexible pricing though. Not all data is equally cheap to transit (i.e. runs on infrastructure of the same capital and maintenance costs). Commoditizing wireless access and allowing flexible pricing would allow more competition and innovation in how that wireless access is provided.

It is going to requi

This plan actually makes no sense. Overage charges are the same rate ($10 / GB), so why am I buying a "plan" at all? Why don't they just charge $10 * x gigs / month instead of all this buying / refunding business?

It lets you impose a upper limit of how much you want to spend (I think)

Not quite. Per the FAQ[0]

  > Project Fi will first alert you if you're getting close to
  > your data budget. If you go over, you'll still get full-speed
  > data and data is charged at the same $10 per GB rate. For
  > example, if you go over your data budget by 350MB, $3.50 will
  > be added to your next bill.

[0]: https://fi.google.com/about/faq/#plan-and-pricing-4

People think they don't want to pay by the megabyte, so they're calling it something else. Also the plan provides a cap so that you know you're not going to pay more than $X per month without going to some app and adjusting something.

There isn't actually a cap.

Q: What happens if I go over my data budget?

A: Project Fi will first alert you if you're getting close to your data budget. If you go over, you'll still get full-speed data and data is charged at the same $10 per GB rate. For example, if you go over your data budget by 350MB, $3.50 will be added to your next bill."

source: https://fi.google.com/about/faq/#plan-and-pricing-4

Or better yet: why aren't they offering an unlimited data plan like what T-Mobile and Sprint (Google Fi's "partners") already offer? Why aren't they even at least going with T-Mobile's approach of "throttle the connection once you go past your data cap, but don't charge overages"?

It's like they're taking the best things of both carriers - their unlimited data plans - and pretending those things don't exist, that they're some figment of consumers' imaginations, and instead just taking the AT&T/Verizon approach, but using a soft and squishy dildo instead of a spiked rusty iron dildo to screw us with.

My best guess is that these carriers regret offering unlimited data.

I see a lot of new offerings that have unlimited slow data. I doubt they regret it; it gives people peace of mind while still giving them incentive to upgrade.

Unlimited slow data is kind of cool. But unlimited, really slow, and free data (like the Kindle's Whispernet) is awesome. It's great to never actually be stuck completely without network access, even if you're somewhere your usual provider doesn't even exist.

I wish Google and Apple would copy the concept and just have their phones always be on the network, with cell plans just serving as a way to get voice service and get a decent download speed. Now that Google has built out an MVNO, they could definitely enable such a thing.

If they regret offering it, then they'd get rid of it like AT&T did.

No, T-Mobile and Sprint embrace it. It's what differentiates them from their competitors. They know that the claims of "oh no, unlimited data would cause congestion issues!!!!11one" were a poor excuse even a decade ago, let alone in the present day, and are thus unafraid to offer customers something that doesn't result in total shafting. AT&T and Verizon can have their fancy networks; they're moot compared to the millions of customers that pick Sprint and T-Mobile specifically because of the unlimited data plans.

Hell, T-Mobile's business model pretty much revolves around it at this point. "We'll give you a couple gigs of high-speed data; if you go over that, we'll just throttle you to 2G speeds without charging overages or any such nonsense. If you want more high-speed, pay for more of it or go with our actual unlimited plan. Oh, and we'll let you rollover your unused high-speed data and we won't make music streaming count toward it and we'll pay your current carrier's ETFs if you switch because we know that that's the only reason why you haven't already switched to us and you won't be locked into a contract anymore." They advertise all this every chance they get, and they deliver on those promises.

I switched to T-Mobile a year ago (from Sprint, which I switched to from AT&T) because of the zero overages, meaning that I wouldn't have to have an unlimited plan just for the peace of mind of not being shafted on a particular month because I watched one too many videos on YouTube or somesuch. A year later and I haven't looked back; definitely one of the better decisions I've made. Google Fi doesn't offer anything that would even remotely compel me to swtich (not even the dual-carrier stuff; I've found T-Mobile to be consistently better coverage-wise and speed-wise than Sprint in my area, so I'd probably just be on T-Mobile's network all the time anyway).

"We'll give you a couple gigs of high-speed data; if you go over that, we'll just throttle you to 2G speeds without charging overages or any such nonsense. If you want more high-speed, pay for more of it or go with our actual unlimited plan."

... which slows you to 2G speeds after 5GB, instead.

I want to like T-mo, I've been a customer in the past until coverage made me give them up, but that point above is somewhat an important omission.

> ... which slows you to 2G speeds after 5GB, instead.

You do realize they really do offer an unthrottled unlimited plan, right? $100/mo. for 2 lines (so $50/mo./line) as of five minutes ago when I double-checked their site.

> Or better yet: why aren't they offering an unlimited data plan like what T-Mobile and Sprint (Google Fi's "partners") already offer?

Because they're acting as an MVNO, and have to pay Sprint and T-Mobile for each MB they deliver to the handset. Google is not trying to replace carriers, they're trying to improve the experience as an MVNO (they providing what Republic Wireless does on a much larger scale).

Doesn't Republic Wireless offer unlimited data plans, too? Being an MVNO has nothing to do with Google Fi's apparent inability to do the same.

They ride on Sprint, who is desperate for revenue. Also, Republic retains the right to boot you if you use too much "unlimited" data on Sprint's network.

> They ride on Sprint, who is desperate for revenue.

Google Fi also rides on Sprint (and T-Mobile, though it doesn't seem like T-Mobile is nearly as desperate for revenue at this point). So there's not really a difference there.

> Also, Republic retains the right to boot you if you use too much "unlimited" data on Sprint's network.

Pretty much all carriers have that bit of legalese in their respective agreements (even T-Mobile does, IIRC, and I know for sure Sprint does). Usually that's reserved for extreme cases where one's use of the network significantly dwarfs that of the rest of the user base and is actually causing congestion issues; a few extra gigs is a drop in the pond in comparison.

Republic Wireless also has a roaming agreement with Verizon, for areas where Sprint's network is lacking. But they are really touchy about abusing that. I assume it's very expensive for them.

Unlimited data plans are actually bad. The incentives are all wrong. Consumers and websites have no incentive to fix any problem that causes them to use unnecessary data, clogging the network. Carriers actually have a perverse incentive to discourage use of the network, because increased use doesn't increase revenue, it just causes more congestion. This leads to stupidity like extra charges for tethering, blocking of VPNs, "traffic shaping" to kill "bandwidth hogs" like BitTorrent and Netflix, prohibitions on running servers, service termination for "excessive" use, cooperation with the MPAA to identify and stop BitTorrent users, etc.

With pay per gigabyte, incentives are aligned. Consumers and websites have an incentive to conserve data. Carriers have an incentive to encourage use and increase speeds. There's no reason to block servers or VPNs or tethering. There's no reason to throttle BitTorrent or Netflix or terminate anyone's service for "excessive" usage. In fact, with pay-per-GB carriers should encourage BitTorrent use and fight for consumers against the MPAA!

Historically unlimited data has been better for consumers because carriers have charged ridiculous prices for overages (e.g. per-KB prices that add up to hundreds of dollars per GB), and consumers don't have a good way of knowing how much bandwidth they're using when they use different services, so they can't predict their bills. If these two problems can be fixed, pay-per-GB is the best way forward. I'm glad Google realizes this.

You seem to have the word incentive confused with the word discourage.

Or it's an obnoxious euphemism.

I have an unlimited data plan on T-mobile for 30 bucks. Paying by the megabyte would discourage me from using data, not "incentivize me to use less data".

>There's no reason to block servers or VPNs or tethering. There's no reason to throttle BitTorrent or Netflix or terminate anyone's service for "excessive" usage. In fact, with pay-per-GB carriers should encourage BitTorrent use!

Thank god for net neutrality, and unlimited/unmetered data, right?

I'm sorry I offended your sensibilities, but this is a perfectly cromulent use of the word "incentive". If you look in a dictionary under "incentive", you might find an example sentence such as "The rising cost of electricity provides a strong incentive to conserve energy."

Data isn't a scarce resource, bandwidth maybe, but data conservation is not (should not be) a user "incentive".

Carriers acting like data is scarce and in need of conserving are discouraging users from using their product...

Gigabytes/month is strongly correlated with consumption of the actual scarce resource under the assumption that most users have similar usage patterns. Variable pricing based on peak times and places would be too complex to actually work well for cellular data, unlike time-dependent pricing for wired broadband or electricity.

> Consumers and websites have no incentive to fix any problem that causes them to use unnecessary data, clogging the network.

Who says that my usage of data is a "problem" needing "solved"? 10GB (the highest Google offers on its Fi page) can be burned through pretty quickly just by watching videos on a road trip or somesuch. I'd much rather pay $80 for an unlimited plan from Sprint or T-Mobile than pay $120 (or more) for Google Fi.

"Clogging the network" would be solved by carriers actually bothering to invest in their networks to handle the load. That would solve a multitude of other problems, too.

> "Clogging the network" would be solved by carriers actually bothering to invest in their networks

This is exactly my point. With unlimited data plans, carriers have little incentive to upgrade their networks. It increases costs without directly increasing revenue. With pay-per-GB, the incentive is clear: upgrading the network increases usage which directly increases revenue.

> It increases costs without directly increasing revenue.

Attracting more customers because you offer unlimited data and other carriers don't sounds like a pretty-damn-direct increase of revenue to me.

See also: how T-Mobile makes money off me and millions of others.

The quote is talking about upgrading the network increasing costs without directly increasing revenue.

The direct increase of revenue comes from more customers arriving now that you're combining a robust network with unlimited data. Both of those things even in isolation are pretty significant attractions; having both of them is even better.

Barring that, however (as I mentioned elsewhere in this topic), congestion issues are already resolved in the wired broadband realm by selling speed rather than data quantity. There's little reason why the wireless world can't do the same by selling access to 2G/3G/4G separately, then making every plan unlimited (or, at the very least, have way bigger caps for everyone, as is the case currently with some of the not-so-great broadband ISPs).

Basically, you'd have T-Mobile's approach, but with a lot more flexibility. In combination with a no-contract carrier (like T-Mobile) or reseller (like Google Fi), a customer could, say, subscribe to a 2G or 3G plan for normal usage, but then subscribe to the 4G plan for a day or so if he/she wants to binge-watch Game of Thrones or somesuch. This way, the congestion issues are addressed (there's a direct monetary incentive for carriers to build more robust networks, since the faster data subscriptions would cost more and generate more revenue) while not imposing arbitrary caps on the quantity of data "used" by a customer. Win-win.

This could be even further extended by providing the 2G and 3G plans with an optional scheme of "we'll give you $X days of 4G per month" (similar to T-Mobile's "we'll give you $X gigabytes of 4G per month"). That way, our Game of Thrones bingewatcher doesn't have to deal with changing the subscription; he'd instead have a week's worth of 4G per month that he could activate on a per-day basis (for example). An even sweeter deal would be for these unused days of 4G to roll over to the next month up to a year (or some other suitably-reasonable length of time), like what T-Mobile already does for its non-unlimited plans.

There's more than one way to do it :)

The real incentive is improving speeds makes shared-bandwidth networks more cost effective. You can serve the same number of customers for less cost. Each connection receives its data quicker then disconnects so someone else can use the air space.

Time is the more important measure of cellular network usage than bytes. I think it would be more convenient for customers to be billed per minute. At $10/GB if my average speed is 5 Mbps that's $0.30 a minute. Or $30 to watch a full-length movie in HD. Makes me wish Netflix still had mail delivery.

> You can serve the same number of customers for less cost.

No, upgrading the network allows you to serve more customers at higher cost (the cost of the upgrades). If you have unlimited data plans, you can only recoup those upgrade costs by recruiting more customers because existing customers pay the same regardless of the speed. Recruiting more customers is also costly and affected by many more factors than just network quality. The connection between network upgrades and increased revenue is tenuous and indirect.

In contrast, with pay-per-GB, network upgrades increase usage and thus increase revenue from existing customers as well as new ones. The connection between network upgrades and increased revenue is direct and immediate.

I agree that $10/GB is far too expensive; I'm sure Google would love for it to be cheaper but the pricing isn't their choice to make. When carriers get some competition from Project Loon and/or Elon Musk's satellite thingy, hopefully prices will go down.

> No, upgrading the network allows you to serve more customers at higher cost (the cost of the upgrades)

Upgrades are a one-time cost. You charge a higher rate for access to the faster network until the investment is paid off then you phase down to all customers. Then your operating cost is lower per subscriber in the long run.

These days, upgrades are a continuous cost. By the time you've paid off an upgrade it's time to upgrade again. Charging a higher rate costs you customers, and with fewer customers you don't even need the extra capacity you just bought. Also many customers are on contracts so you can't increase rates right away.

In contrast, with pay-per-GB, upgrades increase revenue automatically without losing customers. You don't have to increase your rates and you can probably even decrease them and still increase revenue.

I expect that it is prepaid and that they will require you to prepay an amount that matches your typical usage in previous months (based on whatever method of measuring).

They invest the float.

edit: Removed reference to cash conversion cycle because it doesn't really have anything to do with that.

It's Google, they have plenty of cash, do they really need to invest the float of a $20 data plan?

No, they could make a business unit less profitable than it could be. They can also afford to throw money away, it doesn't mean that they should.

The point is they don't need to do that to such an extent that it will affect the plans offered. It's a nice bonus, but no more than a bonus.

I find this sort of thing really quite clever - I wonder how much of a factor it is in the decision process, do they tailor it in specifically or is it just a nice extra; what sort of money are we talking?

My best guess with 2mins of [re]search: Let's suppose they hold on average $10 per month per customer that's unused, Nexus 5 sold between 3-5 million units, apparently. So for Nexus 6's on their Fi plan they're likely only looking at the invested benefit of $30M (USD)? Google probably have that sort of cash down the back of the sofa, would they even bother investing the float? Or are my guestimations just way off??

UK utilities I've always assumed are doing this hence the wilder and wilder over-estimation of bills in order to hold more customers cash. Wonder how much Google will push the "let us hold your cash, you'll get back what you don't spend" line in order to have more cash to play with. How evil are they prepared to get to hold some extra pocket change?

Yeah, although they probably invest the float, the main reasoning for the decision is likely consumer psychology as described by richardoughtery

They're equivalent plans, but people have cognitive biases. Here are a couple of explanations from Propspect Theory:

- refunds are perceived as gains (against the reference point of the monthly charge), whereas a fee is perceived as a loss (and losses hurt more) - bills are capped so the the possibility of big fees (losses) is eliminated (people struggle with probabilities and fear extremely unlikely events)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_economics#Prospect_t...

I bet there would be a psychological impact. People would curtail their usage and frantically switch antennas on and off, resulting in an overall poor experience.

Perhaps having a big allowance in mind just encourages people to use their data!

Ting Mobile (https://ting.com/rates) uses this exact pricing model (1.5 cents per megabyte) above and beyond 2 GB of usage.

Been using Ting for a while now. When you use a lot of data in a month, you definitely pay more. One month I used 10 GB of data, and my bill was $200. It's still less than when I had a contract, but I don't get phone upgrades unless I go buy a new phone.

It's incredibly useful for household budgeting purposes. Knowing that, at most, I can expect to pay $xxx per month for a service makes estimating expenses easier.

The service apparently alerts you when you get close the "limit". Which means that if you're disciplined you can cut yourself off or just realize that you need to increase your monthly budget.

Maybe it's a purchasing nuance with the data supply chain?

As in, it's more expensive to meter everyone's data and charge per 100 MB, and cheaper to charge in 10 GB blocks and then refund retroactively. They are piggybacking off of other networks, which may not accept 100 MB purchases.

I can see them doing a purchasing scheme with the suppliers and then transferring the savings to the customer.

It's a CC charge issue.

You get incremental costs per CC charge. Better, in Googles mind, to overcharge and refund rather than a new charge every 100mb.

Perhaps because all the other carriers sell you X GB per month, so they want their plans to be easily comparable to the layman?

To you or I it is easy to see the true nature of their "plans" but to someone who isn't quite sure how many megabytes are in a gigabyte, this probably makes it a lot easier to compare to, say, AT&T.

This carries benefit for both the business and consumer;

For the business: Google carries zero risk of post-pay billing as you are paid upfront + they are earning interest on the aggregated cash they will either refund or pay to the telco(s) at the end of a month.

For the consumer: You are effective pay as you go, so you don't pay for unused data plus you have an upper limit on spend. The interest loss for money in holding is minimal at the individual level. And given this is likely recurring billing (so I doubt for most people they will ever get actually paid back) you simply keep a float in your google account and top up the difference each month.

http://www.straighttalk.com/wps/portal/home/shop/serviceplan... has a 3GB plan for a year at $41.25 per month. Google's pricing for the same amount is $50 per month. So the question is whether all the new features (wifi calling, international roaming, pay-for-usage) justify the extra $9, plus the cost of a new phone for those without a Nexus 6.

(Wifi calling should probably be left out of that list, since it's most likely going to come to the other carriers later this year.)

It's not just international roaming. StraightTalk does not support international texting. There is no way to text canadian phones from StraightTalk US. If you want International calling you can get that, but it costs more.

You can get that for free with Google Voice already, though. If Google already offers something for free, we shouldn't count it in the value calculation.

It's worth pointing out that with Fi you only pay for the data you _actually use_, so if you only use 1G you end up saving a bunch, and if you need more you can still get it when it's required.

T-Mobile has a 5GB (LTE) + unlimited (slowed after 5GB) plan for $30/month.

It only has 100 minutes, but you can use Google Voice or similar over data. And who talks on the phone anymore anyway?

The reason I mentioned Straight Talk was that it works with all 4 main US carriers. T-Mobile doesn't have service everywhere.

>And who talks on the phone anymore anyway?

I know a number of people who wouldn't buy a plan unless it had unlimited minutes. Some people use their phones for talking heavily.

Ah, that's fair. I have good reception in my area, but I've definitely hit bad areas while traveling.

I do talk on the phone all the time at work, but for personal use it's pretty minimal. But even if I did, the Hangouts Dialer app will make GV calls over data, so I don't use any minutes, and I don't even use data when I'm on wifi.

Straight Talk is compatible with multiple carriers but still makes you select a single carrier though right? Google Fi will jump between carriers dynamically. Tmobile coverage is spotty around here but I've had good luck with Sprint in the past, so I'm optimistic.

I have this plan because I don't use a lot of voice service. I try to use Google Voice through Hangouts to avoid going over the limit anyway. IME call quality is garbage on both a good wifi or good a LTE signal.

This is insane. I can't think of an industry that google is not trying to compete in. Auto industry, space industry, internet of things industry (Nest), internet/media industry, cable/internet provider industry, automobile industry, robotics industry, software industry, smartphone industry, pc industry now the telecom industry. I'm starting to expect Google to launch an airline here pretty soon. How can they possibly compete in so many spaces and compete well? Isn't this how Microsoft started doing business and failed at? I just am at a lost of words at Google's diversification strategy. I don't want to be a hater, but do we really want a singular company being the market leader at everything if they do end up succeeding at everything?

They won't be a market leader in everything. What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS?

The really funny bit is that near the end of Steve Jobs's life (per the biography), Larry Page asked him for advice and of course he said "focus on doing a few things really well, cut out everything else."

Seems Larry decided he knew better.

> What do they lead aside from search, ads, and mobile OS?

Browser, email, self-driving cars. Lots of other stuff too...

> Browser

Leading in memory usage perhaps

Leading in security.

Nah, Internet Explorer takes the crown there.

Leading in self-driving cars is debatable. They surely have the most visibility, but some car manufacturers and academic institutions like VisLab also have some impressive prototypes, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNcyuApIlFw (the autonomous car is the one in front)

That advice led to the closing down of many Google services. Apple doesn't just produce a single device, either.

But they make a line of laptops, a line of mobile devices, and some software. There's no iSpaceship or Apple Submarine(TM) yet -- if you told me Google had a sub bouncing around San Francisco Bay, I wouldn't even question it.

Do barges count? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_barges

the barges are no longer in the bay area

not a sub, but there was/is? this http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/01/07/google-launches-...

Larry (and Sergey I believe) is an INTP, the business reflects that personality type.

> Seems Larry decided he knew better.

Apparently he did. In the same biography, Isaacson wrote that "asking for advice to run a company" was just a clever way for Larry to visit Jobs in peace, playing to his ego, so to speak, as Jobs still held a grudge against Android.

Google is a very different company from Apple anyway. At Apple, innovation runs top-down, from the likes of Jobs and Ive to Foxconn workers. At Google, innovation runs bottom-up.

you raise some really great questions. very rarely in history (or in the present) has a company entered so many spaces and be successful at it.

They are in everything but they aren't a leader in everything. In some markets they actually accelerate competition, especially in ones where there have been long-time monopolists (Google Fiber).

This looks to me like a pure "commoditize your complements" play. All of Google's products require great mobile internet everywhere. By getting involved in that market, they can help make it much more competitive (at the moment, cell reception is expensive and shit).

It's like Google Code. Google didn't particularly want to be in that business, but Sourceforge was complete shit, and the open source ecosystem was key to their business. So they competed, seriously improved on the status quo, and when something better came along (github), they backed away, job done.

So leading this market doesn't matter to google. If they got completely outcompeted, I'd say they'd be delighted.

I agree, and I always figured that's why they built Chrome. They needed the other browsers to step up their game, especially js performance so they could offer the kinds of web applications they wanted to.

And then .. no one did and now we're all stuck with Chrome.

Quite the contrary. The other browsers did greatly improve their game. However, Google got spoiled with their ability to add a new feature to the browser whenever a Google product would benefit.

The cynical take on this is that Google just wanted to increase lock-in to its own browser; however, I think it's more a case that Chrome is a runtime environment for Google products as much as it is a web browser.

Hmm, if this is true, then we should be able to expect similar changes in Chrome like the changes made in Acrobat Reader when Adobe thought they had complete lock-in in the PDF reader space.

Yes they did. Firefox, Safari, IE all stepped up their game. Mozilla is building Servo. Microsoft is building project spartan. The browser is incredibly competitive.

In fact that is their stated reason for developing Chrome.

The reason they built Chrome isn't just that - google pays/paid other browser vendors __hundreds of millions of dollars__ to be the default search providers ($300M to Mozilla per year for a while). Owning the web browser gives them tremendous power and saves them money.

I remember reading that they spent $100m on advertising chrome in one quarter, just in the UK. So I don't think $300m/yr really matters that much. I think with Chrome they were far more concerned about the risk of losing the default position for searches in Firefox (correctly, as it turned out!)

>>They needed the other browsers to step up their game, especially js performance so they could offer the kinds of web applications they wanted to.

The actual reason is they have to pay browser vendors like Firefox hundreds of millions of dollars for having Google search as their default search plugin. Plus, they are at the mercy of other companies if they decide to change the default search plugin. All this plus the mobile game, if you have a browser and that has a major market share you can be rest assured to send the traffic to your sites.

Same with android, as long as you have your stuff(OS, Browser) installed on other people devices, getting traffic from their is easier. Which is why they give it away for free. Have a big market share and you win by default.

Yes. See also Google Fiber. AT&T and Comcast are both scrambling to launch ahead of Google in my area.

Spot on. Google Fi/Fiber both seeks to improve network connectivity for as many people as possible by accelerating competition from the incumbents (AT&T, Comcast, etc). When that happens, everyone benefits, including Google.

Other projects in this space include Android One and Loon.

Same with the new Pixel. A device to inspire Chromebook makers to make better, more powerful Chromebooks. And they (Google) themselves said that they don't aim to sell a ton of Pixels and make a lot of money out of it. I think they do it fairly.

Wasn't that the case with Nexus phones as well? If I remember correctly, Nexus One was partially built to show other manufacturers that a top of the line device can be built and ran on Android.

That's an incredibly optimistic way of looking at what's going on.

Power corrupts...

I can't easily think of an industry that the internet or computing hasn't yet touched. Makes sense that the company who made a name for themselves making sense out of data would do very well in a data-driven world and have plenty of places to go.

Not that I'm convinced it's always for the best. Throw all that control into somebody's hands and even if they think they're doing what's best, they might make mistakes with far-reaching consequences.

This is just another manifestation of software eating the world. What makes Google competitive in any industry? Its talent in software.

>What makes Google competitive in any industry?

Having a goose who lays golden eggs (search + adsense) to subsidize development?

Basically any new business needs capital, so not sure what you mean here. Where do you think VCs get their money, for instance?

It's about the cost of the capital, not the amount. VC capital is expensive since you give away equity.

Use monopoly profits, provide a smart team and take risks.

They don't dominate every industry but they have to diversify in industries to keep their shareholders happy which in turn is good for everyone.

They are not really competing in all of those industries, they might have a crazy project they are attempting, but they aren't really competition.

Auto industry? I'm assuming you mean self driving cars, which, at this point, are still in the concept phase. Space industry? Did I miss something, is Google launching rockets?

There are many other companies that are way more diversified than Google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_Corporation

Plus, expanding into a wireless carrier makes way more sense for Google than any of their other ventures. One of the limiting factors of internet use in the first-world is terrible carriers with data caps.

> still in the concept phase

Multiple generations of prototypes and hundreds of thousands of miles driven is well past the concept phase.

This just comes down to your definition of concept. I consider a prototype as a concept car that exists to show the feasibility of the concept but it has a ways to go before it is ready for production.

That makes sense. I would consider a concept to be an idea or a plan, not a working product.

Unless it's raining

Well, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt are both involved in Planetary Resources[0]. They are actively doing stuff even now[1] (their product is the Arkyd in this case). Not quite officially Google, but I can see where people would assume so.

[0]-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources

[1]-http://www.miningweekly.com/article/planetary-resources-laun...

Satellite photography appears in Google Maps, so rockets are needed at some point.

Actually, they already launched a GeoEye-1 satellite on September 6, 2008 at 11:50:57 a.m. PDT.

"Google, which has its logo on the side of the rocket, has exclusive online mapping use of its data."

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoEye-1

Chaebol are a whole 'nother level of diversified. Samsung sells smartphones and theme parks and ships and insurance and ...

*technology industry.

Despite its impact on our lives it's important to remember that tech makes up just one segment of our massive economy. I have yet to see Google get into Aluminum smelting, residential construction or toothbrush manufacturing.

Doing stuff like this helps Google perpetuate their reputation as a company that's doing "cool things that matter" despite the fact that, financially, they're just a big internet ads company. By doing these types of things Google has developed has such a good employment brand that they can get as many CMU CS Masters and Harvard MBAs as they want. They don't need 53,000 of the best and brightest people on earth working on AdWords, so letting some of these people loose on other markets kinda makes sense. Better to let them do it under google's umbrella than someone else's. And besides, they might actually succeed!

To be fair, there's a big difference between marketing a new MVNO that runs on existing networks and actually expending capital to build network towers. So far Google is only doing the former.

You forgot healthcare [1,2], but point taken. ;-)

[1] http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/introducing-our-smart...

[2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-collect-data-to-define...

Their strategy is simple: they are doing whatever it takes in order to squeeze the most dollars out of you. If that means engaging in backroom deals with wireless competitors and creating with technologically innovative/awesome solutions for you to always be connected at the most optimal speed possible, they are going to do it.

Also remember if the product is not successful they just dump it and move on. As a former google reader and code.google user it feels kind of bad.

The Google is not a company.

Who handles support for this? Is it Google, or one of the carriers that Google's using? Who do you talk to if the handoff between carriers doesn't quite work? I've skimmed the FAQ and I didn't see that listed in there.

For context, I use Google Voice, and while it's really nice in a lot of ways, it has some unfortunate bugs that have persisted for years that it seems impossible to get support for. I no longer unconditionally recommend it to people because while being able to take calls from my computer and get transcripts of voicemails is great, it also pseudo-randomly decides to only direct some calls to devices where I'm not present with no notification on devices that I'm using and also drops a small percentage of texts (my guess is around 1%). Most people I talk to are horrified by the idea of texts getting dropped, and I don't recommend GV to those folks, although it's fine if that's a tradeoff you're ok with.

I understand that it's a beta and that bugs are expected, but it's a problem when you run into a bug that interferes with your ability to use your phone and there's no way to get support for it.

Phone carriers aren't exactly known for their stellar customer service, but at least with them, if you call back enough times or escalate to higher level support, you'll eventually get a resolution. As far as I can tell, that's not true of Google's phone related products.

The typical MVNO model would be for Google to handle all the support. I agree that end-user support does not seem to be one of Google's strengths.

Maybe that's okay -- end-user support isn't exactly one of the cellular industry's strengths either :P

I dunno, I'd rather have "bad support" over "support that literally doesn't exist".

I'd defer to those who currently have Google Fiber. Is support any good?

Google owns that network, though.

So what's your point?

Google Fiber customer here: it's not the best support I've ever interacted with, but other telcoms have set the bar so ridiculously low that it's comparatively great.

Their support for the Nexus line of phones has been outstanding. Anyone can phone and speak to real humans with good tech knowledge, arrange a free replacement for (first time) cracked screens, and get next day replacements.

I have no doubt that the support for this will be as good.

Now, their automated side of advertising is crappy unless you're a large spender, but then that's just economies of scale.

It's been a while, but even spending 5 figure a month, I found it difficult to get quality support from AdWords.

> Their support for the Nexus line of phones has been outstanding

That hasn't been my experience, particularly with this issue:

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=82949

Basically you have to roll a dice whether you'll have sound in voice calls on a Nexus 4 running Lollipop. 500 comments, 1200 stars, and the issue is simply closed as "wrong forum" with no other comment than "contact customer support".

I mean, I'm glad that Google supports so many camera features, as that's clearly the most important function of a Nexus 4, but at the end of the day I still expect my phone to be able to, you know, make voice calls.

Related HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8898669

Android support != Nexus hardware support. It seems like you're much better off support-wise if your phone's screen is shattered than if you are having any sort of issue with the software...

Ironic given that Google is generally believed to be a software company.

If the past is any indication, Google will have really good support at first for this, similar to how it worked for Glass. Then once the product has been received well by early adopters (and received good publicity), they will layoff/downsize until everyone is unhappy.

Obviously I understand your trepidation regarding Google's support, and the proof will be in the proverbial pudding, but they at least claim they'll be providing better support than for most of their other products:

LIVE SUPPORT AVAILABLE AROUND THE CLOCK If you need help, our support team is in the US and available all day, every day. Give us a call, and don't be surprised when you connect right away to a Fi Expert without pressing 0.

Republic Wireless has been doing hybrid wifi / cell calling for some time:

https://republicwireless.com/

Their unlimited 3G plan is $25.

Republic Wireless is owned by Bandwidth.com which also manages Google Voice numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth.com

So has T-Mobile. Any sufficiently fast wifi network becomes a mini network tower. It's a great idea.

To offload to wifi, the wifi doesn't even need to be fast. Voice traffic uses very little bandwidth. The connection simply must have low packet loss and as little latency as possible.

When in non-T-mobile coverage areas, I use my Verizon hotspot for wifi calling with my T-Mobile iPhone, even if the hotspot can only provide 2/3G.

True, that's what I meant by fast. I think it's only something like 30kbs, but it needs to have low packet loss and low jitter or the call will be garbled.

When I had WiFi calling on T-mobile it still counted toward your minutes, so there was really no advantage to it in terms of billing, only in case of poor cell coverage.

Correct, though I think almost all the plans they sell now are unlimited minutes, so the billing is irrelevant

And Republic announced earlier this week that they're going to be beta-testing basically everything that Google Fi will offer that isn't currently part of Republic's service: more flexible billing for data plans, adding a second cellular provider (almost certainly T-Mobile), a new handset (the Nexus 6 is the most likely candidate), cell-to-WiFi handover. The only thing Google's promising that Republic isn't is the international service.

I've been wondering for a long time why Google hasn't just bought Republic Wireless. It's especially puzzling now that Google has made it public that their interests are exactly the same as RW's.

> The only thing Google's promising that Republic isn't is the international service.

Can you comment on tethering? IIRC, my Moto X through Republic doesn't allow tethering.

It would be really stupid to announce a service with tethering limitations that will almost certainly be illegal by the time the service exits beta testing. The FCC net neutrality regulations will prevent service providers from doing anything to interfere with tethering.

I hope the EU make the same move. We can get cheap unlimited plans but they'll always limit tethering.

Fi is a metered data service. Republic Wireless is an unlimited data service.

Fi makes money on tethering. Republic Wireless loses money on tethering.

Thanks. For me, unlimited data for $25 with Republic vs 1GB for $30 with Fi doesn't make a big difference. But being able to tether is a differentiator.

Whoa, their international rates are crazy good. Same $10/gb across 120 countries.

Even limited to 256k/3G, that is still insane. Coverage list here: https://fi.google.com/about/rates/

That's enough of a perk that I'm considering moving to a Nexus 6.

Ouch. I didn't notice that it's limited to 256k/3G.

T-Mobile offers unlimited data internationally as part of their simple choice unlimited plan. It's limited to 256k speeds (Which in my experience, I have gotten basically exactly 256k when I've used it in the Netherlands and South Africa). You have the option of buying 4G speed bandwidth for a fairly reasonable price - though still a bit higher than the Google Fi data rates.

I didn't notice the rate limiting asterisk until your comment, and this kind of kills it for me. It was much more appealing when I thought I would be charged the same for data in the US and abroad.

> You have the option of buying 4G speed bandwidth for a fairly reasonable price - though still a bit higher than the Google Fi data rates.

About 10-15x higher, it looks like. :/ Around $100-150/GB, depending on the pass length, e.g. 100MB usable in 24 hours for $15, or 500MB usable in 2 weeks for $50.

Ouch. I was completely misremembering the cost on the international data passes. I thought it was about $30/GB, but I have no idea where that came from.

I suppose it's still better than Google - the rate limited data is still free, as opposed to paying full price for it, and nothing forces you to buy the full throughput data passes.

The body font ("RoboDraft", #757575) is somewhat unreadable (not enough contrast) on a Chrome/Windows 7 machine with a 1920x1200 display.

Same here, same browser and OS at 1600x900. It's somewhat easier to read on Firefox, but it could stand some better contrast there too.

Yeah. Google's renderer seems to make things a bit lighter, making it really really hard to target a basic width.

Obligatory Raster Tragedy link: http://www.rastertragedy.com/

I've been having this problem for a while. Reading Google Play descriptions are nearly impossible on default scaling.

For family plans T-Mobile's Simple Choice Plan beats Google Fi in most respects:

- No contract

- Unlimited domestic talk, intl talk from US to ~100 countries

- Competitive intl talk

- Unlimited domestic + intl text

- 2.5GB 4G LTE data

- Unlimited domestic + intl 2G data (128Kbps vs Google's 3G 256Kbps)

- Use any GSM phone, not just Nexus 6

- Phones purchased from T-Mobile come with Wi-Fi calling

Most of my family members portion is $30 / mo. Some higher bandwidth users pay $40 / mo for 4.5GB LTE and data rollover. Our family travels a lot in Asia, having unlimited data / text is really useful.

However Google Fi looks like it's really appealing for low usage, single individual plans.

Look at the name. I think their goal is that most of the time when you're out and about, you're connected to Wi-Fi. I think the cellular partners are a crutch to get them there. If they manage that, you'll wind up paying a lot less than with T-Mobile.

You're right, I missed this on the first pass:

> There are lots of Wi-Fi hotspots out there but not all of them are high-quality. Project Fi automatically connects you to more than a million free, open Wi-Fi hotspots we've verified as fast and reliable. This technology helps keep your speed high and your data bill low.

For low bandwidth users a ~$25 / mo, intl coverage, no contract plan can be really attractive. I'm not sure how wifi coverage or handoff will perform in real life testing, but it's appealing to have Google pressure US telecom companies the same way they did with Google Fiber.

I usually don't have wifi while I am out and about, most stores at least require you to hit accept on their terms and conditions before you can actually connect. Maybe if they showed wifi hotspots on their coverage map I could get behind this idea.

Yeah, I don't know how they do this, but Google says they have pre-approved WiFi hotspots the phone will automatically connect to. From this, I wonder if security will be a concern for some of these hotspots.

This is doing the same things as Republic Wireless. Calls and texts over wifi to keep their carrier costs down. RW is cheaper at $10 a month without data and $25 for unlimited 3G.

With RW you need their customized android phone but they are cheap. $650 for the phone is steep (or a credit pull).

Agreed, currently with Republic Wireless, same model (kind of wondering if they had talks with RW at all). I have the unlimited 3G for $25 total and it has served me well thus far. Happy with the service and saved quite a bit after moving away from Verizon.

$650 is a steep buy in for the phone, but I expect they will on board cheaper phones as this takes off. RW is still more cost effective over all at this point, although the data service will probably be better with Fi's two networks (RW runs on the sprint network when not around wifi)

Yeah, I like Republic, they've got a 'refund your unused data' feature in beta, too, and it should make their service cheaper than this offering, though I don't know if they offer an automatic Wifi VPN tunnel.

True except if it's really just 3G that's not enough for some people who like to stream video and audio - ideal bitrates probably can handle it, but not realistically.

That said, anyone streaming Netflix on their LTE connection is going to want unlimited data to start with, so neither is a good bet.

RW's current pricing is $5 for wifi-only, $10 for cellular with no data, $25 for 3G data, and $40 for 4G data. Both data plans include throttling after 5GB. But the new pricing model they'll start testing in May is basically the same as what Google's promising, and they announced on Monday upcoming beta testing for basically everything else that Google Fi will include.

RW is USA only, though.

They've announced that they're adding another carrier, which is almost certainly going to be T-Mobile, who is providing the international service that Google's going to offer. Once RW has made it official that they'll be offering the Nexus 6 and T-Mobile backend, they'll probably add the same international service as Google, if they haven't confirmed an outright merger by then.

Do keep in mind they actively are against tethering, which stinks if your in a pinch and need internet for a laptop or w/e. Also afaik the phone you get from them can't really be used anywhere else. Other Sprint MVNO like ting won't accept RW phone. Maybe Spring themselves will but I'm currently in the process of moving and have a dud for a phone now.

Sell it on ebay to another RW person. I sold my two old ones when I moved to the Moto G and got some money for them. I was surprised because the Moto G is totally worth it and I would not have recommended those old models to anyone.

ARGH.. Google Apps domains not supported. "For now, Project Fi is available only for accounts with an @gmail.com address"

I don't know why this becomes an issue with every single service Google launches. It's pretty clear Google's strategy is not to launch Apps support for any product that is either beta or immediately post-beta, and it wants to wait a bit until things get stable enough to use for enterprise.

It's frustrating because Google Apps has been the solution for bring-your-own-domain email, and many people use it as such. If I could use my own domain on a consumer Gmail account, I would.

Google acts like it's just for enterprise customers, but that's not how a whole lot of people use it.

I have joshhasacell@gmail for my devices, and then josh@josh[.mn] for my personal stuff.

This is exactly why I don't just phone@josh[.mn]

That's actually a much more logical explanation than I've heard before, but it seems to be based on a potential misunderstanding of who is using the service -- maybe it is mostly giant companies, but I bet there are a lot of tinkerers who just like having the custom email domain.

On that thread, for us early adopters who got permanently free Google domains for up to 50 users before Google Apps for Work was ever a thing, declined to upgrade, and kept the free service...

I have no point really, other than to be the one saying Thanks Google in a gripe thread. I have been bitten by this before, but now that the sting has eased I don't miss Google Apps on my personal vanity domain account even a little bit. I have a real gmail /g+ account that I can use to sign up for betas and giveaways like this, for mailing lists I'd rather keep separate from more personal comms, and for any other pseudonymous communication, etc. that saves me from a lot of hassle, and my employer is a paid subscriber to Apps for Work, so I even am really aware of all what I'm missing.

tl;dr: thanks for the free e-mail service, Google! You're a real bro

That would be valid assuming Apps are used by enterprises only. No. People use Apps with their private domains a lot.

The big thing about this from my perspective is that it abolishes roaming. One plan, and you pay the same whether you use it in your home country or anywhere else. I'm not aware that anybody else is offering that, especially not at that price.

As a German living in the UK i currently juggle two SIM cards, and whenever I fly back home I have to mess with the data flatrate there since it's worth activating the monthly flatrate plan even if I just use it for a day. And then I have to make sure that I don't forget to cancel the flatrate when I leave again. Not to mention that this means I have two phone numbers, and I'm not reachable on at least one of them all the time.

T-Mobile already offers basically the same international plan. The only catch (and it is a headache) is they cap the international data at 128kbps, whereas Google is capping it at twice that.

Roaming will hopefully soon be abolished throughout Europe (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26866966). Although there have been talks that this might be delayed by a couple of years.

Then in the UK there's Three who basically abolished roaming in 18 countries (sadly not Germany for now). This includes unlimited (25gb) 4g, which is pretty awesome and better than the 256k Google is offering.

That article is a year+ old. It was predictably shot down. Remember that the EU parliament is pretty toothless.

https://euobserver.com/news/128133 & http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2015/04/14/european-government... have some of the current status of what's left of it. Currently it looks like there's a week or so of "roaming allowance" per year, and even this would only come into affect after a years-long transition period.

Telecoms are good at lobbying.

I agree regarding the international aspect.

Regarding juggling sim cards: I recently traveled between a few EU countries using a 3 UK pay-as-you-go card (with the their roaming package http://www.three.co.uk/Discover/Phones/Feel_At_Home). It worked well, and even in the middle of nowhere in Italy, I had good coverage. It was a PITA to top-up before I left from the US. But if you are already in the UK, that is probably a non-issue. I think it was 15EUR for unlimited data + N/minutes & texts.

I am sure there are probably downsides, but it might be something to look into while Fi is still in infancy.

I found the link to the coverage map in the FAQ: > https://fi.google.com/coverage

Looks like it blankets most of Canada with 2G service. I guess through roaming agreements from Sprint/T-Mo. I wonder if they are selling to Canadian residents?

Would be great, but not holding my breath based on their past product releases.

If we didn't have so many rules for things like this, it would be great, but I honestly don't see this moving into Canada quickly at all.

On the East Cost, we have two companies who own towers and sell access to them to other companies like fido,virgin etc. I can't see them selling access to the towers any cheaper...

My first assumption was they don't cater to Canadians as usual, but after seeing the coverage map I was hopeful.

Attempted to request an invite but it doesn't allow Canadian postal codes (ie: V5H 2T3), only stuff like 90210.

Sigh.

IIRC, the CRTC and the Canadian incumbents wouldn't allow something like that.

Ting Mobile is US-only, also resells Sprint and T-mobile, and their headquarters are in Toronto (!).

It's a certain kind of schadenfreude when you talk to a Customer Service Representative in Ontario for a service that doesn't actually work there.

On an unrelated note - very cool to see Polymer used in production by Google. I was afraid it was left to the wayside.

They just announced they got a Slack channel.

https://plus.google.com/+RobDodson/posts/eL1tjxgr1wV

I noticed it with the paper dropdown. As long as they're dogfooding the platform I'm happy to develop on it!

Polymer actually has 0.8 coming up soon with some pretty significant changes; definitely not left to the wayside.

Is this what you're talking about https://www.polymer-project.org/0.5/ ?

This will be awesome once Google makes a nexus that can actually fit in my pocket. I've only switched from nexus to iPhone a few months ago when I lost my nexus 5 and found that nexus 6 is gigantic. The iPhone is pretty but I miss the nexus.

Compared to what I can get from Verizon (US), the international usage is amazing:

> Pay one rate for data around the world

> In 120+ countries, data usage costs the same $10 per GB as it does in the US (data speed is limited to 256kbps/3G). Check email, get directions, and keep in touch with friends and family when on your trip. Also, call around the world for 20c per minute and send unlimited international texts.

This is very interesting, I have over 10 years experience working in the mobile telecoms industry. Here are my theories on how this could change the market/analysis:

1. This reduces the friction in switching networks, no 'SIM Card' Lock in. It's a pain to keep having to switch sim cards. Some people carry 2 phones here in Africa so they can take advantage of different deals by different carriers.

2. Due to Point 1, This will face push back from carriers

3. Unless there is some incentive for them to get this carriers want to make switching costs as high as possible. To avoid churn.

If it succeeds:

4. This changes the game in voice calling. Currently you sim is linked to a specific carrier, you only logon to their network all traffic (Local, International Voice, SMS, Data) is carried by them. What if you could route International calls traffic via X, and then local calls via Y?

5. WhatsAPP is most likely the company that will get the largest payoff from this. They are a few years ahead of everyone else, and have just launched voice calling.

6. Super-normal profits are over for operators

7. Actual Network quality (vs marketing about network quality) will become more important.

8. This will create an opportunity for players that are focused purely on network quality, and not marketing.

9. Carriers spend tons on marketing, failed product launches etc. At times this outstrips their engineering spend. Some even believe this is not a core competency and outsource IT/Engineering. Any carrier that does the opposite, could disrupt the incumbents

10. The base-stations (BSS/BSC) becomes more valuable, companies that own these have high value assets. They could then lease it out to other players. A few years back operators in Africa were selling off their base stations to American Towers [0] to fund their marketing budgets. At the time, i thought this was not a very good decision. Now i am convinced it was a terrible decision. The network of base stations is probably one of the most valuable assets a carrier has.

If i think of anything else, will post back here.

[0] http://www.americantower.com/corporateus/global-country-sele...

11. There is a massive industry from manufacturing [1] to distributing sim cards and getting them into the hands of customers. I do not see a bright future for them.

http://www.gemalto.com/techno/sim

This is great. I was hoping the data charges would be cheaper. The T-mobile $30 prepaid plan gives you unlimited data with the first 5 gigs at LTE speeds. You also get 100 minutes. This works incredibly well for me as I mostly use my phone for data. If I need to make a call, I'll use google hangouts over LTE.

$30 for 5 gigs? When did T-Mobile start offering this? Why am I then paying $50 for 2 gigs?

They've offered it for a while I think? It's a pre-paid, look in Other monthly plans. It's pretty hidden, I don't think they want everyone to know about it. Also can be Walmart only, but I think you can do it online just fine. http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans

Ditto, it is a great but not very well known option.

Sure, but TMobile doesn't have the best coverage outside of cities. I have this plan as well, but once I leave NYC and get out to rural Pennsylvania, the coverage is abysmal. Often minimal cell service, let alone data.

Can someone explain why mobile data is now the expense driver for phone plans and why it's so expensive? It's obvious that data usage has skyrocketed now that smartphones have taken off, but is all that data usage draining mobile networks? Is there not enough capacity? Or is it just that it's so expensive to build? Is it such a massive barrier-to-entry that rates aren't really competitive?

I'm not terribly knowledgeable in this area, but I think part of it has to do with the availability of frequencies to do data communication over. They price data so people curb their data usage thus preventing crowding on the already limited bandwidth.

Of course, this could just be FUD I've been fed.

Except that Sprint and T-Mobile do offer unlimited data plans (without throttling) and T-Mobile simply throttles instead of charging overages for its non-unlimited plans. I've used both and have yet to encounter issues with congestion (though I don't live in a big city, so maybe it's different in that environment).

Non-unlimited plans with throttling instead of overage charges would probably be the best solution to overcrowding issues in the short-term.

This is almost cheap enough to pay for the new device I would need to use it. I could save ~$25 a month given my current usage patterns over the T-Mobile plan I have. I imagine users of Verizon or AT&T, which are quite a bit more expensive for the same amount of data, might consider this a huge bargain. Certainly being able to migrate across two decent networks makes it more likely to be competitive with the better/bigger networks of Verizon and AT&T.

I wonder, and can't seem to find in my cursory glance through the FAQ, how this handles regular numbers vs Google Voice numbers. I currently use two numbers on my phone. My Google Voice number (which is how I assume this thing does what it does), and the "native" cell number I've had for nearly 20 years. I know I could port the native number to Google Voice, but I currently use both numbers...so, that wouldn't really work, as I'd still need to be able to use my Google Voice number, too. It's a little clumsy on current Android phones (you choose which number to use for outgoing calls either at call-time or by-default), but it works. If this only works for Google Voice service, it might be a bit challenging to switch.

Also, they say this supports MMS. Does that mean sending MMS is finally coming to Google Voice?

Nowhere does the FAQ address this, but I'm assuming that my home and office wifi data use on my phone would continue to be unlimited? They're not going to somehow meter my home wifi use? My wife uses her phone all the time for home internet surfing and email.

This (metered data) seems anti-thetical to google

Google wants you to use the internet as much as possible.

They want you to use google search, watch youtube videos, check gmail, write google documents.

Now you're discouraged from doing all those things due to metered data.

The Business Model of Google Fi seems extremely short sighted,

-----

For context: I'm using metroPCS with a nexus 5. I get Unlimited 4G on T-Mobile's network for $60/month.

They Offer lower amounts of data (ex: 5 GB) for $50 per month but after 5 GB you just get 3G data.

From what I've been told, Sprint and T-Mobile charge MVNOs (networks using their infrastructure) by the byte. Google can't offer unlimited data without running their own network or taking big losses on customers that use a lot of data.

There are no data caps on Google Fiber, so they seem to realize that caps aren't effective for managing congestion. But for now they have to play along with the big networks' models.

So if I jump onto an unsecured hotspot, you're telling me 100% of my traffic is being routed through a Google proxy first? The same company that already has all of my email, docs, photos, and chats? I guess they already had my browsing history with Chrome, but wow... that's a lot.

It's amazing that $10/GB is about 4 times amount local telecom providers charge for 3G in india.

The price is a little disappointing. I expected Google to compete on price as well, but it may not even be its fault if its partners don't want to undercut it on prices, and they just allow Google to compete on services.

Yeah, since Google is just buying service from the others, they probably don't have much room.

Same with Thailand - 5x the price of local 4G data, which caps to 384k after 20GB.

Even their roaming price doesn't compare well - for Asia I get ~$8 per day, for Europe, North America and Oceana it's $15 per day. This is for unlimited data, at full local network speed.

Last time I was in LA for a project (with half a dozen others, all came in from different countries) it often worked out cheaper/easier for them to all just ether to my phone than deal with a crappy prepaid data service each.

Quick nitpick, it's primarily 4g, not 3g. But in general, lots of things in the developed world cost multiple times what they cost in the developing world, especially things whose cost is tied to local labor costs.

I'm guessing the biggest cost of building and maintaining mobile data infrastructure is the labor, and physical and intellectual labor in India is just way cheaper on average than in the US.

Historically, though, the US carriers have operated in way that makes it harder for customers to switch between carriers (carrier-specific-frequency tied phones, contracts). Some argue that this is a natural technical outcome of covering an area as vast as the US, and others say this is deliberate collusion. Either way, MVNOs that disintermediate this seem like a healthy stimulus for competition in the US mobile data marketplace, and perhaps they will be able to reduce the cost/GB in the US.

EDIT: wording

> Coverage in 120+ countries

20USD is ridiculously expensive in some countries. I understand that this may be cheap in the US (is it?), but it's more than twice what I pay in latin america.

And the price goes up if you want data - which you will in 2015.

Well it's meant only for the American Market (no 4G elsewhere and calls very expensive). So that Americans traveling aboard don't have to pay insane amounts of money.

I for example have to get a new sim card each time I travel to a new country, it is a pain. With Google I can just keep their plan, and not worry about getting a local sim card. Most americans don't travel for an entire month, so we have to pay our monthly plan anyways. This just allows us to use our phone for free without paying extra in other countries.

Just want to hasle you guys with danish pricing

For about $28 a month i Get ALL this:

4 hours talk time 5GB 4g data Unlimited text

And these services are included FREE

HBO Nordic (Hbo NOW) Telmore Music (Think Spotify) TV2 Play (Think mini mini HULU) C More PLAY (More streaming) Mofibo (Netflix for ebooks) Min Bio (Netflix for kidshows) politiken (Newspaper) Ekstra Bladet Plus (Newspaper) Euroman (Magazine think GQ) Eurowoman (Magazine think ladies GQ) Gastro (Magazine) Rum (Magazine)

https://www.telmore.dk/telmoreplay?icid=home-playlightpakke-...

If you never leave the country, mobile prices in Denmark are pretty good. But it's a small country so not very hard to cross a border, e.g. Malmö is only a 30-minute train ride from Copenhagen, so I find myself there often. And for that usage, the Danish providers' prices are quite bad. For example the one you linked, Telmore, charges a ridiculous 1,86 kr per megabyte (i.e. €250/GB) for roaming data in Sweden. I would be very happy to have Google's $10/GB roaming prices, or even something close to it. Instead it seems the only solution in Denmark is to have a whole bag full of SIM cards (Danish, Swedish, German, ...), and swap them every time you cross a border.

You Could Choose 3 with 3 Like Home. The plan "FIN TIL DE FLESTE" is unlimited calls, text, Free roaming in 19-20 countries incl. sweeden and 5gb data. its 25USD or 170kr a month and it includes free call roaming, which google fi dosen't. Same plan on google fi is 70USD. https://www.3.dk/abonnementer/mobil/

Why is it that companies these days are so incredibly bad at simply saying what it is they're trying to sell you?

Lmn4d3 stand incorporated.

"do you sell lemonade?"

"what we offer is a new way to experience the quenching of thirst"

Something that isn't clear: is it possible to attach to non-public wi-fi access points? Also: do they charge the same rate per gig for wi-fi data as for LTE data? If so, this seems like a real ripoff.

I wonder how integrated this will be with Google Voice. For instance, will the voice/SMS component have the same spam filtering and Gmail integration that GVoice users get?

With Cricket Wireless (https://www.cricketwireless.com/cell-phone-plans), I can use the vastly superior AT&T network and spend $60/month for 10GB of data, plus unlimited voice and text.

This would cost $120/month on Project Fi, and I'd be forced to use T-Mobile and Sprint, both of which have inferior coverage in the US.

Do you use 10GB of data a month?

Cricket is still cheaper on their lowest plan $40 for unlimited talk and text and 2.5GB. Fi would be $45. Auto-pay on Cricket brings it down to $35

I'm currently on Republic Wireless. The base rate (call/text only) is $10 vs $20 for Google. RW has a $25/mn 3G plan and a $40/mn LTE plan (5GB). Google Fi has the advantage of always having LTE speeds.

RW is able to have cheaper rates because they are doing WiFi calling, which is exactly what Google is doing; no doubt leveraging their Google Voice/Hangouts infrastructure to handle WiFi calling.

I want this as my travel phone. And I love that there's no contract. Not sure how I feel about Google pulling a man-in-the-middle on all of my internet traffic, texts and calls. Kinda scary that they automatically pipe all wifi through their VPN, but I guess they have 90% of that data already and Google are probably safer than the random coffee shop wifi people are used to connecting to.

I suspect part of the motivation for the automatic VPN on public WiFi comes from Republic Wireless's troubles with firewalls that interfere with standard VoIP protocols.

"Request Invite" --> 404.

Good start.

EDIT: Only if the window is sized small enough to trigger the mobile layout for the navbar. Kind of funny in view of Mobilegeddon.

404 on Nexus 7 portrait, works in landscape. Weird.

I don't even know how.

Two observations:

1) Terrible name, really awful. Fi? I guess if it's "project" maybe this wasn't public-brand ready?

2) Why wouldn't someone choose the t-mobile unlimited plan vs this one?

3) For the refund policy, why wouldn't everyone sign up for the lowest plan? The presentation is confusing, just say 1gb min and $10 for each gig after that.

> Why wouldn't someone choose the t-mobile unlimited plan vs this one?

The "compelling" feature is the support for multiple carriers (T-Mobile and Sprint) without having to do some zany dual-SIM setup or somesuch.

To me, though, that's barely any consolation for the lack of an unlimited plan, which is a deal-breaker, and which is why - no matter how "good" Verizon and AT&T (for example) advertise themselves to be - I'll never switch back to them until they provide an unlimited data plan. T-Mobile's unlimited plan (and even its non-unlimited plans) are a way better deal, since you're never charged overages (unlike with Sprint's non-unlimited plans, all of AT&T and Verizon's plans, and - now - Google Fi).

Agreed. Most of my usage is in cities where both Sprint and T-mobile have great coverage. Lack of unlimited is a deal-breaker (or at least higher data tiers)

> Why wouldn't someone choose the t-mobile unlimited plan vs this one?

Someone whose suburban home has no T-Mobile 4G coverage?

Sucks that it only works for Nexus 6 and only for US phone numbers.

It only works for Google phones? There isn't an antitrust issue there?

It only works specifically with the Nexus 6 (not other Google phones), apparently for technical reasons involving network-switching capabilities. Possibly that's BS, but assuming it's legit I'd imagine they'll try to get the technology into other makers' phones in the future.

Though even if they didn't, Google doesn't have a monopoly position in phone hardware so it's not clear antitrust would come into play.

First of all WiFi calling is still a specialty thing requiring custom firmware (see: you cannot BYOD on Republic Wireless)

Second of all the N6 is one of the few phones with dual GSM and CDMA radios, and T-Mobile/Sprint are GSM/CDMA, respectively.

Thats a choice though, the Sprint iPhone also supports GSM/CDMA (as does the verizon one, and the unlocked one too)

I think that would require them to have a monopoly on the sale of smartphones and use that to make entry to the new market (mobile carrier).

It's trying to become a monopoly in various markets.

Product synergies only becomes an antitrust problem when the company has a monopoly position.

I wouldn't think so no. Google is not a dominant player in this market (cellular carrier).

No mention of family plan or data sharing. If I have 3 lines that use 10gb between them, will this still be cheaper?

It's $10 per Gigabyte, no discounts, that's it (but the billing is in some fraction of a gigabyte).

It also only supports the Nexus 6, so I guess you won't want to switch 3 lines over.

"No, we only support individual accounts during Project Fi's Early Access Program. If multiple people on your current wireless plan are interested in joining our early access program, each user is required to have a Project Fi account."

https://fi.google.com/about/faq/#plan-and-pricing-8

from the FAQ: Does Project Fi have family plans or other plans for multiple users? No, we only support individual accounts during Project Fi's Early Access Program. If multiple people on your current wireless plan are interested in joining our early access program, each user is required to have a Project Fi account.

Given that you only pay for the data you use, data sharing is not needed

What I'm curious about is the privacy policy. With the automatic VPN usage on wifi and the potential network architecture of the MVNO, Google could be in the path of all your cell phone data traffic. The opportunity to learn more about you for advertising purposes is very very high.

Whilst I am sure current networks providers are keen to exploit your "private" communications, the thought of Google gaining even more power and insight into your lives is scary.

If you are using Google services and an Android phone, there is almost nothing left they don't have control over.

it's not explicitly spelled out that I can see, but data used over wifi doesn't count towards the cellular network data usage at $10/gb right?

Does anyone know if they are data-mining the phone calls?

This is Google we're talking about. Of course they are.

The possibility of doing that is already there on Android. Try calling a number that has a public profile (like a restaurant), and you'll see how their avatar appears as a contact. That particular request is perfectly mineable.

"Once you get an invitation, you’ll also need a Nexus 6—the first smartphone to work with our network of networks. You can buy one from Project Fi when you sign up or bring one you already use."

=> seriously. its a "Device lockin" instead of "network lockin"

I think that's a hardware issue, not an attempt to lock you in. (I assume) you need something special in order to seamlessly switch between networks/wifi. That or it's their own way to filter out demand while they start slow and test it out.

Well the same could be said about any new service that requires a specific (new) technology, no? In theory it won't be device lockin in the coming year(s). Your objection seems a bit silly at the present time.

Now, if Google has this technology licensed and only they themselves are allowed to use it in phones.. then you'd have a valid argument.

I already have metropcs, its $40/mo for unlimited everything. My plan covers unlimited up to 3g, for 4g or LTE I get 2gb/mo. If I wanted unlimited though, its only $60/mo. How is $100 for 10GB even comparable? Metropcs also has no contract required.

The only unique feature I see is WiFi<->mobile handoff, aka fixed/mobile integration.

Apart from that, I get the same service from Google Voice and T-Mobile, except I get supposedly un-capped, un-throttled data (I haven't tried to test this) from T-Mo.

Republic Wireless does the handoff and is slightly cheaper. With Google you buy a Nexus 6 ~$650, RW needs a Moto X ~$300, so I guess it is a cheaper out of pocket cost.

RW also has the Moto G and Moto E for $150 and $100, and even cheaper plans if you don't want cellular data.

This seems insanely expensive to me! Three offers a sim-only deal that works with all phones with unlimited data for just £17 ($25), and roaming in Europe will be free after December 2015! Are mobile plans significantly more expensive in the US?

Is this a dual-MVNO? They talk about switching between two different LTE providers.

It switches between T-Mobile and Sprint.

sounds like its excellent for Coachella.

+ VPN over WiFi and proper handoff. It is pretty awesome.

It uses a special SIM to hand off between Wi-Fi, T-Mobile, and Sprint service. There's one other MVNO that supports both of those networks, Ting, though they don't support both networks on one device simultaneously (yet; I think they might be working on it). I'm on Ting and it's nice having a T-Mobile phone in my pocket while my wife has a Sprint phone, all on the same account and billing.

Interesting - I like the data roaming, but the pricing isn't very good compared to what I pay here in Italy, which is under 20 euros for 2 GB a month on the provider's network, 400 minutes and 100 sms's.

In my experience, video chat through Google hangout uses about 1G/hour. $10/G translates to $10/hour. This is a significant cost for a remote worker using video chat as a routine meeting venue.

1 Gigabyte per hour? Are you really chatting at 22 Mbit/s? That's like half Bluray quality.

That wouldn't really be surprising if it's an HD video chat, especially when you consider that the communication would likely be bidirectional (unlike normal video streaming, which is one-directional).

I am just reporting a ballpark figure from the data usage i get when actually using hangout for meetings on 4G on my phone.

That said at 3600s per hour 1GB/h would be 2.2Mb/s, which does not seem outrageous for a 8 people meeting

Can anyone explain why the data charges are set up how they are? Why have you choose a "plan" in increments of $10 and then refund/charge you (per MB?) for going under/over your "plan"? Why not just charge you for usage at the end of the month? It comes out the same, and one is weird and the other is very simple.

Republic's Maestro seems to be similar: "Get paid back" for data you don't use. Why? It just makes me keep rereading looking for the catch.

What are the pro/cons of wifi versus 3G/4G ? I guess Wifi is a simpler hardware standard ?

Or does 3g/4g enable more distance and mobility and allow towers to "connect" more terminals at the same time?

I'm puzzled by wireless data layers as google had some wimax project in mind, but I've no clue how those technologies work. I can understand wired networks, but wireless seems like a mystery to me (I also wish there would be more open standards for long distance data channels).

Looks great for international travelers, but this would more than double my $30 monthly unlimited data plan from T-Mobile. I used 5.2GB last month, so that would cost me $73.

You must have a grandfathered plan.

I had a grandfathered plan with unlimited data, until I gave it up in exchange for Canada service.

Nope, just signed up last month. It's still available[0].

[0] http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-monthly-plans

Without unlimited data, this is useless to me. If T-Mobile and Sprint can pull off unlimited data plans, then so should Google (especially if Google Fi uses - you guessed it - both Sprint and T-Mobile as its partner carriers). The least they can do is offer a "you get so-and-so gigabytes of 4G data before we throttle you down to 2G, and we won't charge you anything extra" like what T-Mobile does for its non-unlimited plans.

I'm pretty sure the accountants and engineers at Google got together and figured out that "unlimited data" plans are going to go bye-bye. For everyone. All providers.

As people use more and more data, it just won't make economic sense to offer your customers unlimited data.

If Google had offered unlimited data, and then later canceled it, everyone would be bitching about them killing the competition, anti-competitive behavior, etc.

> As people use more and more data, it just won't make economic sense to offer your customers unlimited data.

It makes perfect economic sense. Users who expect to need a lot of data (e.g. anyone who watches or wants to watch HD videos over a cellular connection, which is a lot of people) would be better served by T-Mobile's or Sprint's unlimited (non-throttled) data plans (which run for somewhere between $70 and $90 per month, IIRC), and everyone else would be better served by T-Mobile's throttled data plans, since you'll never be charged overages.

At least AT&T and Verizon can claim that they have a stronger network with better coverage than T-Mobile or Sprint (which is why a lot of people go with them and are willing to be screwed over by them). Google Fi can't even offer that if it's going to be using Sprint and T-Mobile as its backends; combine this with the lack of unlimited data plans and only supporting the Nexus 6 with zero indication of when other phones will be supported (if ever), Google Fi's dead in the water.

In other words:

> I'm pretty sure the accountants and engineers at Google got together and figured out that "unlimited data" plans are going to go bye-bye. For everyone. All providers.

Then I'm pretty sure all the accountants and engineers at Google are incompetent.

I'm not sure you're getting me. I'm saying that eventually T-Mobile and Sprint will not be able to offer $70 or $90 a month for unlimited data. Or if they do, it will be so throttled as to be completely meaningless.

I'm predicting that as more people use more of their data, the network will not grow fast enough to support the total bandwidth. The fact that they can currently offer "unlimited" is a temporary condition, based on the distribution of network users' bandwidth. As consumption grows, it gets to the point where they can't actually offer it any more.

That's my prediction, and I bet Google made the same prediction.

Instead, you're acting like I don't understand that people WANT unlimited data, especially at the prices it's being offered at today.

And I'm saying that getting rid of unlimited data doesn't solve the problem of network congestion. Actually putting work into the network does solve the problem of network congestion.

Don't punish users because you're too lazy to provide them with a network that's actually designed to handle current/future data demand.

And I'm predicting that it will be economically impossible to handle future data demand, if you allow "unlimited data."

Even with the best intentions. You would need to be subsidized by the government to provide it.

Since so few people TODAY currently make use of their unlimited data, the network can afford to offer those terms. And they found that by offering those terms, they attracted a disproportionate number of customers. In short, it was popular and profitable.

But at some point, the aggregate network demand will exceed even the THEORETICAL network capacity, if you offer your customers unlimited data, and demand goes up the way I think it will.

Or in essence, you will need to limit bandwidth to the point that calling it "unlimited" is just ridiculous.

> But at some point, the aggregate network demand will exceed even the THEORETICAL network capacity, if you offer your customers unlimited data, and demand goes up the way I think it will.

At which point you build out the network so that it can handle the increased demand. The problem of congestion doesn't magically go away if you ditch unlimited plans for pay-per-gigabyte plans.

Even barring that, the wired broadband world already addresses this by making speed the useful commodity instead of quantity, and there's very little reason why the wireless world couldn't do the same. "Our networks are getting congested, so we're going to switch to a new model where you can pay cheap rates for 2G speed or pay more for 4G speed or pay something in between for 3G speed or pay top-dollar for our newfangled 5G" is a much better answer than "our networks are getting congested, so we're going to just cap users' usage of it and hope the problem goes away".

That, in short, is what Google Fi should be doing. That would be an actually-compelling reason to switch to it instead of T-Mobile.

Until then, T-Mobile will continue to get my business, and T-Mobile will therefore be at least that much more incentivized to provide unlimited data plans.

One day it would be nice to not have large chunks of the country not covered by good cell service. Since this service can make calls over WiFi that would remedy some of the situations I have been in where I had WiFi at a campground or similar but cell was spotty or non existent. Granted making a call over the WiFi provided at some camps might not be all the possible.

edit, another area I found little to no cell service was the turnpikes through Virgina and West Virgina.

I'm hoping that their Wifi <--> 4G handoff for calls works better than the T-Mobile handoff. I've noticed that on our enterprise network the extra time it takes to authenticate causes the call to drop. I do understand that the problem has to do with the software implementation and not android, but I'm assuming systems like that are reasonably similar or are provided by some outside vendor?

Im guessing this doesn't piggy back on tmobile music streaming?

I'm currently paying $32 for 5GB on tmobile, google wants $50 for the same network.

To clarify: Google wants $50 for the same network while replacing T-Mobile's throttling scheme with a more traditional "we'll charge you more" scheme.

T-Mobile's the better deal here by a long shot.

Reading through the comments here it seems pretty sad that between international differences and baroque pricing schemes, nobody knows with certainty how much they are paying for their connectivity, or whether $10/GB is a good price or not. You would think considering the size of this market there would be some mechanism to establish a fair price by now.

I often have to manually disconnect from a slow wifi connection and switch to 4G. Project Fi doing it automatically looks great!

Those tariffs seem pretty steep though - I'm getting 3GB of 4G data for £15 a month [1]. Is $50/mo normal in the states?

[1]: https://giffgaff.com/goodybags-4g

Two things I notice looking at the coverage map.[0]

1. Wow, it's available in Canada right off the bat. This must be a first for Google.

2. Does nobody in Montana own a cell phone? Alberta is probably equally empty as Montana, and yet almost their entire provice has coverage.

[0] https://fi.google.com/coverage

I doesn't seem available in Canada at all, that looks more like it's the international roaming coverage (from T-Mobile or Sprint)

Montana is pretty well covered by AT&T. I travel out there all the time, so I was forced to ditch my old T-Mobile plan :(

Does all that region above Edmonton really have 2g coverage? How? Why?

Oil sands.

I knew when before I watched the video that it would be fluffy and meaningless. I was right. What's with tech videos lately?

With the per GB charging, is that only data usage routed through cell towers or do they charge for roaming wifi usage as well?

This is absolutely a question that should be in their FAQ. Was wondering the same thing. Sadly the FAQ is full of marketing/PR non-anwsers...

When I bought my Nexus 6 from T-Mobile, one of the things the CSRs told me was that it would soon be supporting Wifi calling similar to how the other carrier branded phones did. They were just waiting on an update to Android.

Now this comes out, and I wonder if the update is still happening or if Google's answer will be to switch to Fi instead.

With my family we have 5 phones, 3 iPads and 1 hotspot. 2 of the phones are unlimited data with international voice / text and free 3G international data. Other stuff is on 5Gb data. Cost around $300 per month (t-mobile). The Google math does not seem to work for me. Now I will say t-mobiles coverage could be better.

This reminds me of Anqor: http://www.anqor.com/

They are basically emulating SIM cards from a database to give you the best rates for where you are.

Is Google doing something similar, or are they just big enough to make good deals with telcos internationally?

Hacker News is great. Saw the video and got nothing, came here and got the facts. Side note: Google has been taken over by marketers, the engineers who built this must be cringing. Certainly not a startup way to do this, feels a bit like Wave ie massive ambition, not useful out of the box to anybody.

Funnily this is quite similar to the main plot of the movie "Kingsman: The Secret Service"

My current AT&T plan gives me unlimited calling and text along with 15GB of data per month for $90. Fi would definitely be expensive for me for the same data usage. I've signed up for an invite nonetheless (I have a Nexus 6) and interested to see how it goes.

So this only works with a Nexus6, but does anyone know of a comparable plan that is month to month that supports international roaming? I've got an unlocked Blu Android phone I was hoping to use overseas for traveling through Asia. Is t-mobile the only one?

International rates are way too high, 12c for landline minute or 31 for cellphone in Serbia is ripoff.

They are doing Republic Wireless by Google. This is not bad and might make more competition. Maybe not many users will use it, but there will be perception of one more option.

It is a great move by Google because unlike most other Google products, internet is a necessity.

Unfortunately they haven't launched family plans yet, so I would be paying more than I do with T-mobile for virtually the same plan (in addition to Sprint coverage, which isn't all that useful in my area). Hopefully it comes soon.

Agreed, These offerings are competitive if you have a Nexus 6 (or want to buy one) and don't have a family plan.

Rates on T-Mobile can get down to $25/2.5Gb of data/month

They are basically adding a wireless network as an paid add-on to hangouts. I love it.

Video borrows a lot from Apple's "Designed by Apple in California": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyQfye4vAQ8

This does look promising but it is in no way cheaper than existing options. I am currently using a family plan from AT&T to get 1GB (10GB shared among 10 to be precise) + unlimited calls+text for $27.17 per month.

Are you on a single plan with 9 other people? If so, that really isn't a fair comparison. A single line on T-Mobile is a fair comparison.

If each of your users use more than 717MB of data and less than 1 GB, then AT&T is probably cheaper. How much would it cost you if one month you used a total of 20GB of data? If the data usage varies from month to month, Google would probably be less expensive. (I'm not sure if you are including taxes which would probably change things a bit, but you get the idea.)

It surprises me every time how expensive data is in the US. I get unlimited text, 300 minutes and 6GB of data(4G) for about $40 a month.

I make a lot of my calls through Facetime now, so I don't need unlimited minutes.

This is too little too late. AT&T nearly matches this with a much better network. The international stuff is interesting but not that interesting with the current plans available from carriers.

Unfortunately I think I'll need to stick with buying my phones for half the cost and sticking with a 2 year contract with a company like Verizon.

I can't justify switching and needing to buy a $650 phone.

But you spend way more than that over the course of the contract.

Everything about this sounds better than my current plan with Verizon except the coverage. Looking at their coverage map in central Virginia scares me because of the large areas of no coverage.

It's a shame this is probably never going to come to the iPhone...

Besides home where I amazingly get "4G" where I travel is 2G so yeah - the irony is I'm typing this while using a Verizon LTE Mifi hostpot from said "2G" location.

Their roaming cost for data, is actually less then I would pay for data with a Canadian company. If it wasn't for the voice (and only 3g), I would totally sign up.

this is excellent, someone well funded to take on the cellular companies that have been asleep at the wheel with pricing, customer service and innovation for years.

The company who figures out how to make mobile data cheap will absolutely crush the competition.

Let's hope that's Google's intent with this project.

Is it something similar like..

When one of my friend calls from UAE ( to India) using internet, I got call from a local indian number.

Not sure what system is that.

Couldn't the separation of talk/text and data be eliminated? Is there a difference anymore or is it just marketing?

Why does Google keeps over-engineering every single product except the one thing they are making money of: Google Search?!?

I would love this... if it wasn't by google. I'd rather not have them digging through yet more personal data :(

$47.04 per month ( plus taxes and fees ) for 2 years, assuming you don't already have their phone. Not bad.

I'm getting one, to use in China, without censorship. The problem is, I will stuck with an Android phone :(

the only question is that, it's unavailable and you need an invite and then wait, this becomes the norm these days, you can announce something for sale at the first sight, then let the potential customer to wait, don't feel too good about this kind of sales/marketing method myself.

It's cool but I ran the numbers and staying with our carrier seems like it's cheaper.

Does anyone else find it hilarious you can't sign up with your Google Apps email address?

Not really, it is a beta product and they don't ship beta products to apps customers.

> <paper-button>

It's nice to see Google finally dogfooding Polymer in their own products

Already have enough internet access, I'd pay for a way to get away from it.

Has the nexus 6 aged well? early reviews made it sound pretty flawed.

It was a piece of crap from the beginning so no, it hasn't aged well.

I have one and I'm quite happy with it. The screen is almost too large to use but I'd still give it 4.5/5.

The best thing about it is the fact that it comes with no bloatware. My S3 had 2 or 3 bloatware apps that would crash on startup every single time.

It's still pretty top-of-the line, I love mine. Best Android device in my opinion with the possible exception of the Moto X, which is very similar (just smaller and slower). The longer I have the N6, the more the size is an asset, rather than a liability.

I have been using one for the last 6 months and it's the best phone I've ever owned. Great screen (size is not a problem), stock Android (no bloatware) and decent battery (lasts till 10pm in the night with heavy usage).

This can be used against the net neutrality in the near future.

This is sweet. My brother and I were thinking about wild ideas like this. We couldn't be more happy to see someone as awesome as google doing this.

Well I bought some stock in a company that is supporting this fi. Hopefully I'll make enough to buy a Nexus 6. ;)

Well I bought some stock in a company that is supporting this Fi. Hopefully I'll make enough to buy a Nexus6 ;)

I would be interested in a beta invite, but it might just close it three to five years anyway.

Scrolled to the bottom to check if someone had a made this comment. Was not disappointed.

Please, for the love of God and all that is holy:

Bring this to Canada.

The Circle.

asdasdasd

In their FAQ they haven't addressed the security issues when connecting to public WiFi hotspots. The user's traffic would be flowing unencrypted, easily accessible to strangers. I wonder if they'll be providing free VPN service when connected to public WiFi.

"Know your data is safe

Your data is secured through encryption when we connect you to open Wi-Fi hotspots. It's like your data has a private tunnel to drive through."

So that's a yes

ETA: Of course this does mean Google has the plaintext, but then, your ISP always has the plaintext unless you're bringing your own encryption, so this is really no different.

Google is also in a much better position to make use of that data & metadata than the typical ISP.

At the same time they're not going to invite shoddy monitoring/injection services like many ISPs have done.

VPN.

Quoth the source:

Know your data is safe

Your data is secured through encryption when we connect you to open Wi-Fi hotspots. It's like your data has a private tunnel to drive through.

Possibly:

http://www.pocketables.com/2015/03/exclusive-google-is-worki...

>When Project Fi automatically connects you to an open Wi-Fi network, we help protect your data by sending it through a secure connection, known as a Virtual Private Network (VPN). This secure connection protects your data from being looked at by other users on the open Wi-Fi network.

https://fi.google.com/about/faq/#wifi-connection-and-calls-2

"Project Fi has partnered with Sprint and T-Mobile, two of the leading carriers in the US, to launch our service."

Lolz. That's some definition of leading I haven't heard before.

They're both in the top 5 (3rd and 4th, respectively; 5th is US Cellular). There are dozens of much smaller wireless carriers out there (usually with regional coverage at best excluding roaming).

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