The craziest part of Project Fi is that phone calls and network connections do not drop at all while it is switching carriers/WIFI underneath -- there is a lot of low-level networking magic happening here, and the crux of this tech. I hope some day Google will release some code or white paper on this.
- I'd love to read a more indepth analysis about how /well/ this interface/service provider-switching works.
- I want to know if the signal/coverage is comparable or better than Verizon (which IMO has the best quality+coverage in the parts of the US that I've travelled; all over the west coast & hawaii).
You mean they've solved the problem where your phone is useless for 30 seconds after you walk out of your house and lose WiFi? I'd almost switch for that feature alone, if true.
Unfortunately, no. I have Project Fi and this is still an issue. They may only have this feature when actually on a call, since I imagine it uses a lot of power to constantly poll for the power of networks. I can still hope that they'll fix it though.
Could you go more in-depth on your experiences here? Your opinion seems to differ with the review, which refers to it as seamless. It is the main feature I am interested in as I get anywhere from two to zero bars in my apartment complex but have a fairly strong router and would love to have it transition without dropping as I am walking home.
If I am on a call, it's seamless - no issues there. However, it doesn't seem to work for data in general.
I commonly try to get Google Maps directions as I leave the house, and often it just fails since it's still trying to use my WiFi which is too far away to be useful.
I am not sure whether Project Fi uses this technology but Apple have been using Multipath TCP [1] for a while. I think Apple's implementation is limited to data, in the conventional sense, rather than data+voice.
Carriers with wifi calling already manage to transfer calls between wifi and the cell network. However, maintaining network connections between the two is impressive, and quite useful; that makes it much more reasonable to set up various wifi networks and use them seamlessly.
This is a decent article on some of the underlying standards: http://www.radio-electronics.com/articles/cellular-telecoms/... I worked on an implementation of an IPSEC VPN using SIM auth for IMS. GSM standards are amazing in how they make everything work together across many different generations.
The smoothness of this (if it is substantially better than existing VoLTE+Wifi implementations) more than likely has to do with improvements in the handset Wifi implementation and the underlying network evaluation criteria, etc.
Put simply, handsets that are capable of this (and there are many) typically establish an IPSEC VPN back to the IMS network core. When the IMS network needs to switch between cell and IP+IPSEC (usually over Wifi) it is no different than the handoffs that have been happening between individual cell towers since the beginning of cellular. To many aspects of the network the IPSEC VPN looks just like another cell.
The tricky part here is getting the timing right - this is the real reason cell providers and sites have such precise and well coordinated time.
I don't have any experience with it and I haven't seen it work but more than likely the handoff between VoLTE capable carriers is accomplished using similar methods.
Huh, the part where you can either keep your original handset phone number or your GV number on one account (but not both) is problematic. I've been trying to get people to call and text my GV number for ages, but some still use my legacy handset number. From the sounds of it, I'll have to do some juggling to keep the two numbers, or just let my old handset number lapse back into the pool, as I can't keep both on the same google account.
Not quite a deal-breaker, but a big enough deal that I will think carefully after my invite shows up (if it ever shows up). OTOH, the pricing model represents something like $30 or more a month cheaper than what I'm currently paying.
I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.
I realize this doesn't help you now, but when I switched carriers a few years ago I decided to port my primary number to google voice (for a one-time $20 fee) and then got a new carrier number that I have never shared with anyone.
Not needing to port numbers since then has been really nice. I'm now on the company cell phone plan and I didn't have to port my number into their plan and put it into their control.
Another advantage is that when my phone got soaked while on vacation I was able to log into my google voice account on my wife's phone and not have any interruption of service.
Google will send you an email for each SMS if you set it up that way. You can have that email be forwarded to your primary gmail account in addition to setting up the autoresponder.
Google Voice is great. I'm currently using the T-Mobile $30 plan (5 GB data, 100 minutes voice) in combination with Google Voice. The amount of included data is more than sufficient for me, and for voice calls I use Google Voice via VoIP (Hangouts dialer).
Project Fi is more expensive than the T-Mobile $30 plan but it does have some significant advantages. You can use Sprint's entire network as well, you get unlimited international roaming (which is a godsend if you make occasional overseas trips), and you can use the native voice network for calling and SMS which gives much better coverage and reliability especially in rural areas or crowded places like stadiums.
I'm just starting my second month with Fi. I also had the T-Mo $30 plan and thought it might come out more expensive.
I've come out actually slightly cheaper than the T-Mo plan. WIFI seems to be pretty ubiquitous where I go because I only used ~ 300MB of data last month.
Usually I use ~ 2GB per month. The one big change I did at the starting of the month was set my podcast streaming apps to sync on WIFI. That's about half of my monthly data right there.
I'm currently on t-mobile, so the project fi network is at least as good as what I have now. The pay-as-you-go data plan is also going to work out to be cheaper for me - I currently have the 3 gig plan with rollover, because every few months I end up in a hotel with bad internet and really need more than a gig of data. I'm definitely paying every month for a service I only occasionally need.
I wonder what it will be like, psychologically, when I'm paying by the megabyte for data. Right now, I know I've already paid, so I just stream stuff. Under project fi pricing, my total cost per month will go down, but it will also be metered- I can have it go way down if I'm frugal. Not sure if I'll download that audio book on LTE if I know I'm going to end up paying an extra buck for it. I mean: it's just a buck, but still. Interesting to see where I land.
For me international roaming is the main advantage (although I usually buy local SIM cards if I'm in another country for an extended duration). T-Mobile coverage works very well where I live (Bay Area). If I'd need better coverage for rural areas I'd probably sign up at a Verizon MVNO such as Straight Talk ($45 for 5GB).
Sprint's network is pretty bogus, though. For $45 a month I use Cricket, where I get 5GB of bandwidth (10GB for $55, it's a recurring promotion) on AT&T.
I do the same but in the last few months I have noticed strange latency on my Hangouts calls. There seems to be a very short delay that causes conversations to be more difficult than they need to be. It's probably my home internet (since this is the only place I use Hangouts to call) but I am pretty sure I have a good connection. I haven't tested latency thoroughly but on the bandwidth side of things I have something like ~80mbit/5mbit through Comcast.
Yeah, I did the same thing. The problem is just that a small percentage of my friends and family still call my original actual cell phone number instead of the GV number. Moving to fi would mean I'd keep the GV number but lose the older cell number, and those late-adopters won't know they're texting the wrong number.
> I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.
ring.to does this for free for US numbers down to the SMS autoreply. They're actually run by the same company (Bandwidth.com) that Google uses for service in a lot of area codes.
Huh, ring.to looks like a good idea. I can switch my handset number to being just my plain-old GV number I've had forever, and port my legacy cell number to ring.to and set up autoreply on SMS and some other stuff just to help the transition and make sure I see who is calling my old number.
ring.to is free. I have five numbers parked there (but am otherwise unaffiliated). They make their money by, I assume, connection fees paid by other phone companies whose customers call numbers parked at ring.to.
buy a 20.00 burner phone from 7-11 and port your number into it, use the web account or phone options to set up your forwards. Put the phone in a drawer and shut it off. It should last years if not too many people call it.
Yes, of course, it's a basic cell phone still. Many buy them, drop 20 bucks on it, pull it apart and make a nice GPS tracker insead of paying $800 for a "professional" work truck positional monitoring system.
Hey, I've never met another GV user in the wild, so please forgive a slightly off-topic question, but- how can you stand it?
I get my voicemail/missed call notifications totally at random. Sometimes they're immediate! Sometimes I'll miss a call when the phone is in my pocket in a quiet location, so I know it never rang. And then 4 hours later, I'll get a notification about the voicemail. Ditto texts.
I got everyone to switch to my GV number, and now I'm getting them all to switch back, because I just can't handle the (occasional) lack of immediacy.
I only have any of the problems you mention when I put my phone into airplane mode or generally have no reception- sometimes I'll get a notification way after I get reception again. Otherwise, I have no immediacy problems.
I use Plivo to forward calls and sms for 2 of my old phone numbers. One is a US # and one is Canadian #. You don't have to program it to forward, you could very easily code an autoresponder type thing.
You can park either number by creating a new Google account and porting the number to Google Voice on that account. No SMS autoresponder but you could set up a voicemail message.
you can park your number at twilio for about a dollar a month. It gives you a full api to pretty much program whatever response/forwarding etc. you want.
I had been using Republic Wireless for the past year. It also tries to keep you in WiFi (at all costs). This is in return for a flat rate of $30/mo with unlimited text, talk, and data. (Data gets limited after 5 gigs though.)
This was a great service when I was in college. I stayed on one network the whole time. But after I left school and started The Commute things got hairy.
I switched to Google Fi about a week ago and the service is already much more incredible. But this is no surprise, I pay a lot more for it too.
If you are debating between services like Google Fi and Republic Wireless, I would suggest Republic Wireless is a better choice for someone who doesn't do a lot of daily travel. It's cheaper and definitely good enough, fairly seamless and whatnot. However, for anyone doing any nontrivial amount of daily travel, I highly recommend going with a provider not /hell-bent/ on getting you on WiFi. Google Fi seems to be a good alt.
> But after I left school and started The Commute things got hairy.
> I switched to Google Fi about a week ago and the service is already much more incredible.
Do you mind explaining this further—you mean calls/texts were getting dropped while you were on the road with RW? I'm trying to decide between Republic Wireless and Project Fi myself, I've got about a 30 minute commute each way.
To be honest I really don't recommend it. With RW, they will force you to join any nearby Wifi network - even if it requires you to accept its ToS and you haven't done this. So if you are waiting for Amtrak and the opposing train pulls up for 2 minutes, you are switched onto this network. Or if you are in a bus on the highway in traffic and you pass a Wifi hotspot, it will switch you onto it... Even if you turned off Wifi. It constantly turned on Wifi even when you explicitly tell it not to. Google Fi has not done this so far. And, if the public Wifi requires me to accept some ToS, Google Fi will keep me on 3G until I have accepted the ToS and am /actually/ on the internet via the public wifi. So, in the end, RW really pissed me off. Still, it is a cheaper service and as a college student it was all I needed. I stayed on one network 24/7 and had no complaints at the time.
Edit: One thing about being forced to switch to a network is that it is silent and you don't necessarily know if you are connected to the internet or not. So if you walk into a Starbucks that has public wifi and your wifi is turned off, your wifi will be turned on and you will have no internet connection until you accept Starbucks' ToS. This has left me very confused before missing messages, calls, etc.
I'm confused. I've been a Republic Wireless customer for about a year now, and I've never noticed any pressure to use an open network. My home network is the only wireless network to which my phone will automatically switch. When I'm away from my house, I remain on 3G unless I explicitly choose to connect to another network. It will attempt to reconnect to a network that I've used in the past, but one can stop this by 'forgetting' the network in Android settings.
Maybe I have a different phone? I'm using a 3G Moto G. Maybe I turned off something in settings? I have not rooted the phone, but certainly may have changed something from the standard settings menus. Here's someone else agreeing that your Republic Wireless phone should never connect automatically to a new network: https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/26466
I think you were either experiencing a bug that has since been fixed, or you were running some other app that was automatically approving the connections (like Wifi+). I would not discourage anyone from using Republic Wireless due to this worry. At least currently, you are never forced to use any wireless network that you do not want to use.
As jerf mentioned in the sibling comment, it appears my experience is not representative. I also had the Moto G, first generation? I had it for about a year and a half. Maybe I screwed something up in my settings too. I definitely would love to have had a different experience! I can't comment on why the things happened as they did. But for whatever reason on my phone I definitely had a bunch of issues. Maybe there was an issue with the radio hardware on mine? Not sure.
I do a ~40 minute commute, and I'm not sure exactly what eatonphil is referring to. I can think of two possibilities, which are worth discussing on their own so it's not like I'm putting words in anybody's mouth.
One possibility is if you use a lot of data itself on the commute, like streaming audio. That would eventually be problematic (although 5GB is still a good bit of streaming audio). As I hate my audio being at the mercies of networks anyhow, let alone cellular networks, I play things off local storage anyhow, so I'm not sure about this in practice.
The other possibility is if your commute goes through more residential areas. I'm mostly commuting on a highway going through mostly rural areas and my phone has no WiFi to be confused by. But I have noticed my phone can be really annoying to try to use while walking to my car in a reasonably residential area, while it's busy trying to get one of the xfinity_wifi connections, and then failing, then I walk to the next xfinity_wifi connection... end result is that I end up turning off the Wifi radio if I really care. Would be more difficult if this happened in a car. (And some of this is Comcast's xfinity_wifi thing where all their modems now emit a secondary SSID for "other customer" access. It's neat when I'm visiting a friend's house that has it, but I'm yet to find it useful generically out and about.)
RW certainly mostly works. Perhaps it mostly works slightly less than a dedicated cellular provider, but it also costs a lot less. There's some quirks in the cell phones but I'm unconvinced all of them are RW-related. (The only one that probably is is that sometimes I dial, and after a couple of seconds it returns to the contacts screen like nothing happened, and then about a minute later dials the number. Not sure what's up with that exactly.)
Edit: My experience does not entirely match eatonphil's sibling post. When I turn off wifi, it stays off. It does get overexcited about connections being up when they really aren't, which I believe is more an Android thing (Android decides it has a wifi network, RW tries to use it), but of course it affects the service. RW is working on it now. Google probably has twice as many people engineering Project Fi as RW has employees, plus a lot of in-house Android experience they can directly tap for a custom Android distro.
I suspect were I not already a customer of RW, I'd go Project Fi, too. I'm definitely not annoyed enough with RW to incur the personal-time expense of switching, though.
I switched to Fi about a month ago and it has served me very well in the Bay area so far, and it made a trip to the east coast with good wifi and bad cell service much easier because I could just use wifi.
Also liking the Nexus 6. After playing with a coworkers a little I decided I was fine with the size and after a month I'm still very happy with it. I upgraded from a Galaxy Nexus.
Please who doesn't love being able to ditch Verizon.
I got a Fi invite a few weeks ago, but right now the main reason why I don't use it is that the Nexus 6 appears to be too big (I still have a Nexus 5 and the size is perfect). Probably going to wait for this year's Nexus refresh before I make the switch.
I was happy with the Nexus 5 and initially didn't want a Nexus 6 because I didn't think it would fit in my pockets. I was wrong. The Nexus 6 fits in the pockets of every pair of pants I own. I actually appreciate the bigger battery even more than the bigger screen.
Well, Nexus 7 fits into every trouser pocket I own but I think the issue with Nexus 6 is using it with one hand where you cannot cover/access the whole screen with your thumb.
Same for me, the increased battery life is nicer than the increased screen size. But I do think it is just slightly too big for comfortably using with one hand (and I have big hands).
I will go back to something similar in size to Nexus 5 next time I switch. That was the perfect size.
I just signed up for a Fi invite (anyone know if it's pronounced 'fee' or 'f-eye'?).
I was also sceptical about the size of the Nexus 6, but when Google dropped the price a few weeks ago I decided to give it a try (if you buy from Motorola or Google, you can try it out for two weeks to see if it works for you and return it if not).
I absolutely love it. I even sold my 7" tablet, as the extra screen size of the Nexus 6 is great for reading and web browsing, on which I spend several hours per day. However, I have always used phones with two hands, so if you're someone who likes to use one hand then you probably won't like it.
Coming from the Moto X, I do miss the excellent Motorola software, gestures and IR sensors, but the extra screen size, better speakers, better camera, wireless charging and most importantly for me, the rapid android updates make the Nexus 6 worthwhile.
I hope Project Fi has a side effect of improving existing Google Voice / Hangouts integration. While it's been slowly getting better, some of my texts sent via GV in Hangouts never get delivered, some arrive out of order. In addition, I've been able to crash Hangouts reliably and reproducibly (in latest version, by picking a GV sms conversation, pulling up the other person's contact card (by tapping their avatar) and selecting "send hangouts message"). And we still have no group SMS integration in GV.
Here in France I pay 20 EUR (<$25) per month for unlimited voice and SMS, + 20Go data.
This is way over my needs BTW, I never exceeded 5Go in any given month in two years, except one month when I bought a new laptop and left Dropbox sync it over phone tethering. I then discovered that there was no way to buy more data, which was a bit frustrating...
Is unlimited voice really that necessary? I see a lot of plans in European countries and US that mostly give unlimited calls for those amounts of money. And who uses SMS anyway when you have Whatsapp, Hangouts, iMessage, FB Messenger etc.
Good question, I guess there are still people that talk to each other, but I believe the unlimited sms/voice is just a sales pitch for the plan. They don't really expect you to use it.
In my current plan I have 5000 free SMS per month. That's just silly, I'm not sure if I have even sent that many SMS in total since I got my first GSM phone in the early 90s. :)
But as long as the price for the data plan is good, I don't really care what else they tack on to it.
Any idea if they're layering any additional security onto the unsecured WiFi connections it seems to prefer? (attwifi, xfinitywifi, etc. are all unencrypted, and I personally only use them in very limited ways for that reason.)
That makes sense. I'm also curious about data though. Unless they tunnel all your traffic through a VPN, you just have to hope your apps and web sites are using https correctly. (And if they did tunnel all traffic through Google servers, it would raise a different set of concerns...)
If you explicitly configure them, it doesn't appear to for "LTE data". It has an autodiscover mode that will open a VPN before using wifi for LTE data.
I signed up for an invite, but honestly I don't see why I'd want this over my current service, Ting, which does basically the same thing (an pay-what-you-use MVNO with nice app integration) and is already available for any band-capable phone (I'm using a T-Mo iPhone 5S right now). And, there is a WiFi calling toggle in the app that was off by default for me.
In all honestly I'd rather use less Google-things than more.
The typical month costs me $26 before taxes, by the way.
I was on this service for some time as a tester. Because I'm a dabbling minimalist and frugal enthusiast, I got my cellular data down below 250MB per month. As far as I can tell, there isn't a plan out there that can beat $22.50 per month.
Imo the big downfall is the requirement to use a Nexus 6. It's not a bad phone, but it also isn't terribly good. I recently went back to iPhone and joined another slightly higher but still low-cost carrier.
Do you mind sharing which carrier you have now? I've been looking at switching to one of the lower cost carriers, but haven't seen one that supports the iPhone.
Cricket and Ting both support iPhone. If you have an iPhone below 6, you need Ting if it's a T-Mobile iPhone and Cricket if it's an AT&T. I think you can use Ting with the CDMA iPhones. I'm on cricket personally.
> I am slowly working people back to my handset number on project Fi phone for texting because it works in my primary Gmail account and I can continue to match my text messages on the desktop with the Chrome extension.
Does this mean that GV will be using your old phone number that you posted over from a carrier? And that us Android folk can have iMessage-like functionality finally?
You've been able to port cell numbers to Google Voice for quite some time now, independent of Project Fi. It's a $20 one-time fee. You get all your SMS, MMS, and voicemail messages in Hangouts, both on phone and desktop. Replying to SMS and reading transcribed voicemail on a desktop is quite nice. You can also make and receive voice calls from your number on desktop as well.
Since GV is a cloud service and independent of your phone, you can do all of these things from a desktop even if your phone has no service or a dead battery. For example, if you are overseas and you don't have cell service you can use WiFi to send and receive calls and SMS, from your phone or your laptop, using your normal number. Of course you get all other Google Voice features like call recording, ringing multiple phones, sending specific numbers to voicemail, low international rates, etc.
You can also use Hangouts Dialer to make Google Voice calls over data from your phone, without using plan minutes. This is optional, but it has the advantage that you can use T-Mobile's $30 unlimited data plan as an unlimited everything plan and potentially save a ton of money. Data service is not as reliable as native voice, but cutting your bill in half is pretty compelling.
Downsides are few. The big one used to be that MMS didn't work, but it's finally fixed. There may still be some oddities with group MMS in Hangouts. The Hangouts Android app kinda sucks, but there's supposedly a redesign on the way. SMS happens over your data connection, which is less reliable in places with bad service like crowded stadiums. Porting your number will end your current carrier contract and you'll have to start a new one if you want to continue using your cell phone; depending on your contract this may cause early termination fees and/or your cell phone may be unusable for a few hours during the transfer.
I do this with T-Mobile. The downsides are once per year my phone number is literally banned and I cannot text or call for a few hours for absolutely no reason. It's supposedly due to anti-spam issues and obviously there is zero support on this, so you just have to suck it up while you are banned for an arbitrary amount of time for an unknown reason.
I ported my number to GV while traveling interationaly. I have had consistent problems and numerous bugs with a variety of different Hangout apps/plugins, mostly related to placing outbound calls. I don't find the service very reliable, but it is still useful
I have had a Fi phone for a few weeks, and it seems pretty agnostic between the two networks - it just takes the one with the strongest signal at any given point in time. I believe under the hood it is connected to both all the time, and selecting which one to use in software (and reevaluating this decision on the order of seconds).
The Google MVNO probably just has roaming contracts with both - this sort of thing is part of the GSM standard. In the UK Three and EE apparently share their networks, even though they are two completely separate companies [0].
Except Sprint is CDMA, and T-Mobile is GSM - again, for data its easy to do, both networks can use the same APN, so handoff is seamless and transparent, for voice, its less so.
That's easy to do with data, both use the same google APN end point, voice its not so easy to do, even with selective call forwarding, its still less then elegant.
The Nexus 6 is mostly like a very large Moto X, adding
some very sweet front facing stereo speakers making the
Netflix experience on a phone like a small theater.
- I'd love to read a more indepth analysis about how /well/ this interface/service provider-switching works. - I want to know if the signal/coverage is comparable or better than Verizon (which IMO has the best quality+coverage in the parts of the US that I've travelled; all over the west coast & hawaii).