Project Fi Call Can Not Be Continue
Every time my wife and I travel – I normally keep a spare GSM unlocked to any provider cell phone for use in the country/countries we visited. I dreaded using the roaming service of our US provider, especially not knowing what the massive charges would be once we got back home. There was also the painful set up to call the provider and let them know to open the phone up for roaming/international use-I know it takes a few minutes on the phone with them but still. After doing some research I run into Google Project Fi. Project Fi – apart from what I have covered hardware-wise in a previous post on here – is rated for no roaming international use in over 135+ countries – you only pay for the data you use or extra cellular calls made outside data – I will explain some more down the rabbit hole. Really – there is no roaming – you have to use you Project Fi Network as its designed and your bills will be minimal.
A few months before getting onto Project FI my wife and I were talking about moving overseas through her workplace for a few years. This got me thinking into how do we stay connected – we have had the same cell numbers since 1999. All our family and friends know how to reach us – we are rooted in these numbers and getting new numbers would be easy but we would have lost so much. I also didn't want the expense of using a standard service overseas and paying international usage charges. With my research – Project Fi came into play – see the previous review. Let's Fast Forward.
After testing our Fi phones locally for a few months to test if all worked smoothly – we boarded our flight to our home for the next 3 years – Italy. Time to see Project Fi International use in action. First stop Spain. Once we landed in the South of Spain our Fi phones were powered up and within seconds we both received a message from Project Fi. Welcome to Spain – you're covered – Fi Phones started searching for its partner cellular provider and wouldn't you know it we were connected. Fi promises 256 kbps but I was seeing speeds upwards of 5mbps – amazed. We were only in Spain for a few hours so got caught up with Family and Social media before shutting down for the next part of our trip – time to get back in the air to our final stop.
After a few hours, we landed in what would be our home for the next 3 years – Italy. Once our flight landed on the tarmac we booted our phones up and here we go again – a different message. Welcome to Italy – you're covered. Thanks again Project Fi. Before you know it we were connected to 3 ITA and in some areas, the speeds were up in the double digits via LTE. It has been close to 2 years now living in Italy and traveling through Europe while using our phones without any hiccups. Let me give you some minimal cons on the international use and some advice on keeping fi charges low because overall Project Fi receives an A+ for covering us here.
My wife for a while didn't understand how to use her Fi service efficiently – she kept complaining that she was being charged for calls to home – they shouldn't be charging us to call a US number. To understand what was happening I had to explain to her how to actually use her Fi service and Fi phone. Google is a Data company and Project Fi is a Data Communications service that added cellular as a benefit – to ensure you minimize your Project Fi bill when using internationally you must maximize use of the Data Network. Any Fi user can call a USA number using the Google Hangouts application – it's free to call home using your Data through Hangouts. For my contact list, I added +1 to all my USA numbers so that using Hangouts to call was a breeze. You will be charged for international inbound calls as well but the fix is to get those who would call you to use Hangouts or any other Data Communications service like WhatsApp or Skype. I got my wife's phone set up just like mine currently and she has already noticed a difference in Fi bills.
We just recently got some new Pixel 2s in the house and after going through as many configurations and settings on the back end I noticed that Google added into the cellular side a setting that allows you to Configure Wi-Fi calling – it's description says – use Wi-Fi for calls when my connection is strong enough. So I went ahead and set this to ON for both of our Pixel 2s – this will actually helps as we can now use the cellular interface to make Wi-Fi calls with ease – and it is clear. The new Pixel 2s also have eSim and an open free sim slot, the eSim is a digital Sim that Project FI allows you to set your phone up without inserting a physical sim card. It works very smooth, I am hoping they open up that free physical slot in the coming months to where our Pixel 2s can be Dual-Sim devices.
We have been to the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany, and France so far with Project Fi and all times worked perfectly with no issues. This year we plan to hit some other EU countries and the Caribbean – I will update the list of locations that has worked as we have compiled a few trips. Some advice when traveling with FI, use Wi-Fi anywhere you trustfully can, if you can't trust the Wi-Fi turn on your VPN if you have on your mobile device. You can use Fi on multiple Foreign networks that have relationships with Google – so Far in Italy, I have switched between TIM and 3 ITA, just go into your mobile network settings under preferred network type and experiment as needed. My home-base is Italy – so my FI bills are consistent from that location, but if you travel to other countries – keep in mind that some Fi charges will be delayed so there will be no surprises. Calling foreign locations on Fi while traveling internationally is actually quite cheap – some countries are pennies per minute while others could be in the .20/minute range – I will link the International Rate list here.
Fi has worked for our family while living internationally for the last 2 years – we are very happy with the consistency of the service and the ease with which we are kept connected to our friends and family. This service may not work for your family or personal use but the beauty of Project FI is that you can buy and try with no contract, all their phones are unlocked for use by any provider. So if you decide down the road you want to burn some rubber and move on – you can without any weights holding you down. Project Fi is an evolving service – every few weeks/months new little tidbits are added for the benefit of its user base. I have heard so many complaints on Fi Forums but really – did you sign up for just another cellular service or did you want to try something new that is changing every day based on its user base. Fi is a project, an experiment – I will stay on as long as it does what it promises to do as a service.
Source: https://techtravelandtings.com/2018/05/04/project-fi-international-use/
0 Response to "Project Fi Call Can Not Be Continue"
Post a Comment