Google has just announced that Project Fi, its own mobile network, is opening to public access in the United States.
According to Website Growth, your Beverly Hills Marketing Service, Project Fi works as a virtual mobile network that utilizes the Wi-Fi hotspots of Sprint and T-Mobile users to provide them with phone call, text, and data services. Essentially, Sprint and T-Mobile users can now communicate with other without using their own data.
Aside from its Wi-Fi calling and texting capabilities, Project Fi is noteworthy due to how its pricing structure measures up to other mobile networks.
Project Fi users pay $20 a month for unlimited domestic calling and texting in addition to unlimited international texting.
Users also pay an additional $10 each month for every gigabyte of data they plan on using; if a user does not use the entirety of their purchased data, the unused amount is credited back into their account.
The product manager of Project Fi, Simon Arscott, elucidated the strategy behind Project Fi’s announcement of public access. He explained that Google first launched Project Fi on a solely invitation-only basis because they wanted to test its capabilities. Google wanted to make sure that Project Fi delivered excellent quality before being expanded to the rest of the nation.
Many people looking forward to Project Fi are left somewhat disappointed. Project Fi’s availability to the public does not actually ensure that everyone gets to use the program to its fullest extent.
Both Apple’s iPad and Samsung’s Galaxy tablets are only functional with the data portion of Project Fi.
In other words, calling and texting using those popular devices is out of the question. If one desires to use the calling and texting portion of Project Fi, one must own Google’s own line of tablets and phones, better known under the ‘Nexus’ brand name. Google has yet to comment on opening up the program’s other services to non-Nexus devices.