A Google Fi Review:
I was a T-Mobile customer for a million years (er, slightly less—but still probably a decade) and I dreaded the day that they’d merge with another (awful) carrier. I was very happy with T-Mobile, as long as I didn’t have to speak with their customer service department, which still sends me bills for service I never had. (ARHGGH.) The rates were good enough, but for me the main thing was its international service, which included free overseas low-speed data in almost every country in the world, at no extra fee.
Now that day has come, and T-Mobile is likely to merge with Sprint. I, however, don’t care, because I jumped ship a year ago, and I’d never go back. This is my Google Fi review.
I hadn’t even heard of Google Fi until I read about it in an interview with Tom Turcich, who was walking around the world at the time. Google Fi is Google’s telephone service. Its plans have gotten more complicated over the three years since I started using it (you’ll be shocked to hear — less generous) but I still think it offers the most seamless international data rate. With the Unlimited Premium plan ($65/month), you can:
- Call 50+ countries from the US for no charge (rates vary for the others, from $.04/minute to Andorra to $2/minute to Antarctica
- International high-speed data up to 50G per month, with throttling after
- Free texting worldwide
- Calls originating from outside the US (like you are in Spain, using your phone to call wherever) at $.20/minute
I practice pretty normal data hygiene (downloading movies on wifi rather than viewing on cellular) and have wifi access at home overseas, and I can’t remember the last time I was throttled. Without thinking about it much, I tend to use around 8GB per month, with home wifi use and no super-heavy downloading otherwise. My bill has tended to be around $100 a month, with most of that $20 coming from international calls I’m making away from my wifi network. I could tamp that down if I were more restrictive making international calls away from wifi and really cutting down on my data usage.
If you move to Fi, you’ll have a better experience using their (select) range of phones. This has recently become an issue for me: I love my Pixel, and until now I’ve been very happy in the Google ecosystem, but I loathe — loathe — the AI “enhancements” negatively impacting my use of Gmail. I’m ready to leave for Proton mail or another provider without the dumb AI intrusions, but having a Pixel makes this more annoying.
As for the coverage: My Google Fi coverage actually seems slightly better overseas than at home, where it runs mostly on the TMobile network — there have been a few times I’ve had to work to find a good signal, in more rural areas near home. This is a hassle, but it’s not enough of one that I’d ever consider going back to a traditional cellular operator. AT&T? Seriously—never. Never.
I know about eSim services like Airalo, but I don’t recommend them. My experience was exactly like this writer’s, as I found it aggravating and unreliable. With Fi, I pay just about the same amount, for just about the same service, anywhere I go in the world, and I have a largely uninterrupted, reliable service in any country. No special arrangements, no requests for additional international data, no need to worry about overages as you’ll be throttled way before that. Now, I have been throttled in the past, and it was incredibly annoying, but there’s always the option of buying additional data. But it’s only happened a handful of times, after over a decade of intense international travel, and my bill’s never been much about $100 a month, with heavy (though not irresponsible) calling home to the U.S. from my regular cell phone. That’s not a bad deal.
American cell phone service is still a disgusting rip off. (For the record, in France, I pay about $60 a month for my cable TV service, home wifi, and landline and cell phone both with free calls to the U.S. — combined for everything, thanks to more competition here.) And I don’t like giving even more of my data to Google than they already have.
That said: My Google Fi review is positive: In my experience, it’s absolutely the best offering out there, especially if you’re traveling internationally and especially double if you’re looking for an alternative to T-Mobile. I don’t know how long it will last, but I’ll be using it as long as it does.
