How Google’s Project Fi pricing stacks up to the competition
J Thoendell stashed this in Tech
Source: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/04/h...
It's hard to label any one service as "cheaper" than another—it really comes down to what fits your usage patterns. Project Fi's pay-only-for-the-data-you-use policy has the potential for savings, but if you use roughly the same amount of data per month and can perfectly fit yourself into a plan from another prepaid carrier, you have a good chance of saving money elsewhere.
Project Fi is great for people with fluctuating data usage though. Take me for instance: most days, at home and at work, I'm on Wi-Fi, with barely any data usage, but there are those months where I travel a lot, and then my data usage spikes. Project Fi would give me money back for the low-data months, while flexing to a larger plan when during busy months. For a person like me, it's perfect. I don't need data all the time, but when I do need it, I need it to be fast and plentiful.
Still, price isn't the only thing to consider when choosing a network. Fi also has a lot of great features that don't show up in the text/talk/data breakdown. Project Fi's combo Sprint and T-Mobile plan should have better coverage than either Sprint or T-Mobile individually, and the 3G international data will be a big deal for some people. You're also getting the ability to send calls and texts to all your devices—it basically has a (hopefully) non-terrible version of Google Voice built in.
Stashed in: Google!, economics
Sounds like they've found a market.Â
More on why this is a big deal:
http://recode.net/2015/04/22/googles-project-fi-what-it-means-for-consumers-google-and-the-carriers/
3:29 PM Apr 23 2015