But it doesn't include tethering/hotspot. WTF? That's a feature of my phone, not of a fucking plan.
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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Why is this a thing for US phone networks?
Why do they care whether the ones and zeroes sent/received stay on the phone or not? Data is data. It shouldn't be any more complicated than that.
Maybe they are in bed with ISPs.
Some of them are ISPs. I've received mail from both Verizon and AT&T about getting a 5G Internet "connection". It just connects to the cell towers.
Someone came by so I demoed one and it was awful. The latency was, predictably, unhinged.
Because they can. I have the same gripe.
Money. Simple as that.
along with access to 30GB of high-speed data
Unlimited
Unlimited can be limited.
We just didnt know much much ;) /s
I think the "high-speed" is the important part there. You have reduced speeds after the first 30Gb
That sounds like a limit with extra steps.
I would rather have unlimited with extra steps than unlimited with extra money
Have fun with an unusable "unlimited" connection
we have sonic in the west for 50$ and up to avg 8mgb
After the 30 GB, your speed will be throttled to 256 kbps. These are 2G speeds, painfully slow. So, as long as you're sure you're not going over the cap.
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Meanwhile, Google slurps up all your data to send you better ads.
~~send you better ads.~~
...sell your data to yet further enrich themselves.
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This is really nice for me. I'm actually going to save a good chunk of money. Usually use between 2 and 5 gigs a month. On the flex plan that's 40-70 dollars.
I used to loudly support Google Fi when I switched to them from Verizon. My coverage wasn't as good, but my bill was a small fraction of what it had been, and I'm usually on wifi so the pay for what you use model was great for me. I also really enjoyed taking it with me to Mexico on vacation. Sweet deal since my average data use was like 1GB/month.
Then like a year ago, I did some digging and found that I could have a very similar experience with Mint, except unlimited data for about the same price. Plus the price was locked in because you pay for it up front. It took maybe an hour to swap our phones over, and we kept our phone numbers. There was a little bit of hassle getting voicemail to work properly, but that got figured out.
My favorite thing about these types of services are that you can buy a pretty cheap, unlocked phone, use eSIM, and you're not locked into your service provider. I am a fan of the Pixel a series of phones since they've got plenty good capability at half the price of flagship phones, but with good support. Others love the option to dump Android for Graphene OS but I really haven't seen a compelling argument for why I personally should go to the trouble since I don't see enough of a benefit for my use case. But that's neither here nor there. I just like unlocked phones, and my 8a and my wife's 6a were cheap and they were easy to transition to another provider; look into unlocked phones the next time you're shopping for one so you can have that kind of freedom.
US Mobile is a good option too, even cheaper than Mint IIRC and you can switch yourself between Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile networks.
Yeah, we used Google Fi for a bit, but then I did the math and found a better offer. I use very little data so I use Tello ($8/month), and my SO uses a lot more so they have Mint (15GB plan). All in all, it's cheaper than Fi.
I also don't use much data and found Keepgo to work well. It has data plans that don't expire, you just buy the data and use it until it's gone. 10GB ($42) usually lasts me the whole year.
Others love the option to dump Android for Graphene OS but I really haven't seen a compelling argument for why
I mean if you don't care for privacy or security then you won't.
I personally should go to the trouble
The only trouble is plugging in your phone and clicking a few buttons on the website.
privacy and security
I'm not really sure how much my OS affects that though. If I remove that avenue, cool, but I'm still signed in on my browser and YouTube and various other apps, so to really protect my privacy and security, wouldn't I need a whole slew of other changes to actually be effective? Credit bureaus, which I never even asked to have involved, can't even keep a lid on my shit. How secure and private can I really expect to feel just from changing my phone OS, and is that warm fuzzy really good enough to justify moving from something that is working exactly as I want and expect to something that is, in a word, uncertain?
Not trying to attack you or anybody with these questions, just kinda frustrated that any time I've tried to look into it, all I find is a vague statement about privacy without any real elaboration, or worse, a bunch of speculation that the guy running it is unstable or something. Idk, it just feels a little like the wave of people screaming the praises of crypto.
It's a little more than that. I had to manually install speech-to-text and fiddle with language downloads and mic permissions to get that to work on my 8a. And I had to disable exploit protection on my banking app so it would launch. And... well that's about it. The rest was basically identical to setting up stock Android.
I used to be a huge fan of Fi, especially as someone who would frequently travel, as it was really cheap to use both at home and abroad.
That was all until they pulled the rug from under me and i got slapped with bills for an inactive plan.
Even Amazon with their AWS would cancel stuff if you’ve clearly not been using your instance, but these guys changed the agreement and said fuck you anyway.
Not that it matters anyway, because genocide supporters don’t deserve any clients
US prices for mobile data are well above most countries still, even in the "third world"
Try Canada. Our prices are about half as much again as US, even when you account for the exchange rates.
Australia here, I have a 100GB plan with unlimited calls Australia-wide for AUD40 a month. With the current miserable exchange rate with the US, that's about USD25/mo.
And any unused data rolls over each month so now I have (checks)..... 4.22TB of data available, because I have a dual-sim phone and my work sim does all the heavy data usage.
I wouldn't suggest relying on Google for anything. https://killedbygoogle.com/
Search and Gmail are probably about the only thing they won't kill.
Seems like they are trying to kill search. The pillow is on its face and they are slowly starting to push.
Old news bud. Privacy is what they're killing/abandoning now.
Maps I bet they won't kill. Or GCP. On a long enough timeframe though, who knows
'Member when YouTube TV was $35/mo? Now it's around $83 I think
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