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Comment by AcerbicZero | Hacker News Reader

Its good to see them expanding the networks, if only a little. I've been on Project Fi for ~6 months or so and its been a fairly mediocre experience so far, but it works well enough for the price point I suppose.

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I am also using and loving Google Fi so far. No manipulative billing practices designed to obscure the true cost. Reasonable metered data prices.

The only downside is having to use a Motorola phone. They seem to always break within 1.5 years of purchase.

I'm quite excited to try it. Unfortunately (or fortunately) i'm on T-Mobile, with a no contract $30/m Unlimited text/data plan (very few minutes), and that's just really hard to beat.

Note that this plan might not be available anymore.. not sure really, but i know i often get flack for being on this plan from tmo. It clearly isn't making them enough money, but my god, i love it.

It's 100 minutes a month if I'm not mistaken. Can't say for sure if the plan still exists, but it's almost impossible to find any advertising regarding it. You have to specifically ask for it like those quesadillas at Chipotle. I was happy with it for a couple years but switched to google Fi when I got my Nexus 6P and I'm perfectly happy with it.

Yep, 100 minutes per month with unlimited text+data (the first 5GB at 4G speeds). You can find the details here: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/other-prepaid-plans . I activated online and have been using it for over a year now, been pretty pleased. I've had to use the Personal Hotspot feature on my iPhone 6+ when my internet has been out and I've went through multiple GB in one sitting without any issues or additional billing, which has been nice.

As my tmo plan may suggest, i rarely use minutes. Fi only offers a minutes oriented plan, and i hate that pricing. Feels like i would be wasting money.

Oh, question for you if you don't mind: Since you were on Tmo, can you compare the reception/coverage for Fi vs Tmo? In theory Fi would have better reception due to more networks, but i'm not really sure how much Tmo and Sprint differ in network size/locations. Thoughts?

I'm in USA-WA and the hills/mountains really cause reception issues. So the reception coverage is important to me. (Nothing beats Verizon, unfortunately)

Total Wireless offers a plan with unlimited talk and text and 5GB of data for $35 on Verizon's network. It is throttled at 5Mbps, but if you use little enough data to make Fi worthwhile I don't think that will be an issue for you.

Well, i'm more concerned about the data than talk or text. Most of the calls i make are done via Google on my laptop (free minutes), so i almost never need minutes on my phone. It's not the data price of Fi that bothers me, it's the flat $20 charge for Unlimited Talk/Text that i don't want to pay.

If they gave me $5 or $10/m for reduced talk, i'd be in heaven

Probably best summed up with "Nothing beats Verizon, unfortunately". I primarily use WiFi calling as I live in a gigantic concrete building facing the lake so I get literally zero cellular reception in my apartment.

The plan still exists, you just have to jump through hoops to find it: http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/other-prepaid-plans

Had to go to prepaid plans > Individual plan > Talk and text only Link underneath (even though the plan is the opposite, good labeling).

(Screengrab of how I got to it in case they're doing cookie/referer checks and the direct url doesn't work: http://paste.click/VSgPVD )

You can stick an activated Fi SIM in an iPhone if you want. It's undocumented, but it works fine. The only thing I lost was smooth switching between cellular and wifi, but otherwise I've been quite happy with it.

And iMessage on your root phone number, right?

yep, on my email address & Fi number.

Do you mean if you do this you will have to do the manual switch every time?

And may I ask which iPhone you have? I have an iPhone 5.

Calls get dropped if you're on wifi and walk outside. iPhone 6.

$10 per gigabyte is not "reasonable metered data prices" or "the true cost". In practice, the price per gigabyte of data delivered by any network operator in any given region past the first byte is magnitudes cheaper than the first byte, by the nature of coverage.

Someone using, say, 100GB on any network operator is not using $1000 worth of electricity / tower uptime costs / etc. They might, in the most ludicrously expensive regulatory environments, be costing a hundredth that.

Why not use one of the newer phones? I've had the 6p (Huawei) since release, and it's pretty nice (although I wish I'd gotten 5x (LG) and waited a while to save money.) The 6p has been aggressively discounted the past few weeks, and I imagine the 5x is in the same boat.

? Neither the Nexus 5X (LG) nor the Nexus 6P (Huawei) are made by Motorola.

Can you expand on your experience? Is there just not enough coverage or is it something else that makes it mediocre? Where are you located? I was thinking of switching from Verizon (bay area) and would be interested to hear from someone who's already using it.

As someone from the bay area who has also had a mediocre experience, I can maybe answer: Speeds have been fine, but there are areas where it'll show full bars but provide no data (like in BART stations, my hunch is that those use femtocells that don't handle FI users properly). Additionally, occasionally it'll swap networks (I think, goes from LTE/HSPA/3G) and the 'swaps' have like 30 second switchover times. Then there's the annoying app that tries to connect you to open wifi networks, but usually connects you to something that requires login which means your data just breaks (it's an app you can turn off, just an annoying experience). The price isn't actually competitive, Cricket would be cheaper for the amount I use (~3GB). Also, the benefits of being on multiple networks don't really matter in urban/urbanish areas, since TMo/Sprint both are trying to reach the same dense areas -- and despite having two networks, both lack significantly outside major urban areas. For instance, I lose coverage on the drive from the Bay Area to Sacramento.

But the worst is shortcodes and SMSes -- some weird configuration at FI meant that no shortcode texts came or went. I got error messages when I tried to use Magic (the texting startup). I never received 2FA texts while logging to to my bank or to github. I contacted support and they told me it was because those services used an http gateway, and that Fi just did not support that. I later found out that the support person was just wrong, and I escalated up support to a tech who 'reset' specific shortcodes on my account, which means I now can use 2FA for my banks/github, but I had to specifically find the shortcodes they used to get them whitelisted.

I'm on a prepaid t mobile plan, and I also notice data not working on Bart, despite full LTE bars

I've had a little bit of a different experience (not in CA but still southwest)

Regarding price: I don't use my 3GB, usually under 1GB due to Wifi at home/work/public transport so project fi is nice because it takes the amount I didn't use and refunds me at $10/GB for the next bill.

I get sms's from shortcodes fine and haven't had any issues but maybe its because of the companies (apple, amazon, google, github) are whitelisted from other peoples bug reports.

I haven't run into the auto public wifi-connect issue that much, it seems to work well for public transport and seems to fallback to lte when a login screen is required, but maybe I just haven't experienced as many login page wifi networks.

I think I would go with tmobile if I had multiple people on my bill though because you get discounts for that which isn't there for fi.

Data service is great, voice is terrible, at least in my experience in the Bay Area. I can even use my phone under the Transbay Tube (which I couldn't when I had AT&T). I also have problems with shortcodes taking forever to arrive (but they usually do show up). Voice however is horrible. All kinds of fade outs and drops happen when talking for more than a few minutes. Overall though I'm way happier with them than I was with AT&T.

Another anecdotal piece of evidence, my wife switched to Fi from ATT, I stayed on ATT. It's extremely common for my calls not to register on her phone, it just rings through to voicemail and she gets nothing showing on her Nexus. We've also had issues where text messages were delayed by hours, with no indication that it didn't go through.

It's cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for, we're in a major metro area.

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