This can't go too far unless Google adds other phones including iPhone to work on their Project experiment wireless service. Otherwise it is bound to fail like Project Glass.
Why would they add other phones? They're most likely not making money on this deal, so it's an incentive to get a Nexus 6.
I don't think it's a good deal at all. I get 3 lines on AT&T all iPhone 6 plus and 30 gigs of data for $170.
My other concern would be Google, the notorious information broker, having access to cell info. I'm sure they have already figured out how they will monetize the venture.
It's $15/month for ANY smart phone you have on the network. Call AT&T to discuss. Sounds like they are over charging you.
International SMS and tethering are included. No additional cost.
You need to read more carefully.
See footnote, in red:
Savings every month
Save up to $25 a month on access charges for each AT&T NextSM or No Annual Contract smartphone you add to your Mobile Share Value plan versus a smartphone with a 2-year contract.*
*If you're currently getting these savings and you upgrade to a new 2-year contract, the savings will be lost. Restrictions apply.1See savings details.
Note from where to where, in red:
Unlimited international texting
Enjoy unlimited texting from the U.S. to the world.2
International texting capabilities and availability vary by country.
See footnote, in red:
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">Savings every month</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">Save up to $25 a month on access charges for each AT&T Next<span style="border:0px;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">SM</span>
or No Annual Contract smartphone you add to your Mobile Share Value plan versus a smartphone with a 2-year contract.*</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">*If you're currently getting these savings and you upgrade to a new 2-year contract, the savings will be lost. Restrictions apply.<span style="border:0px;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">1</span>
<a href="http://www.att.com/shop/en/wireless/modals/msv-savings-every-month.html" style="color:rgb(51,129,183);margin:0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;" target="_blank">See savings details.</a>
</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;vertical-align:baseline;">Note from where to where, in red:</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">Unlimited international texting</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">Enjoy unlimited texting from the U.S. to the world.<span style="border:0px;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;padding:0px;vertical-align:baseline;">2</span>
</p>
<p style="border:0px;color:rgb(51,51,51);margin-bottom:6px;padding-left:50px;padding-right:50px;text-align:center;vertical-align:baseline;">International texting capabilities and availability vary by country.</p>
This can't go too far unless Google adds other phones including iPhone to work on their Project experiment wireless service. Otherwise it is bound to fail like Project Glass.
Agree, it's pretty good, but limited to 1 phone might get Google glass support at most.
I'm currently paying AT&T $62/mo for my voice and data (6GB) so I'm not sure how this is much better. But it's Google so I'm sure all the tech sites will be treating it as the greatest thing since sliced bread.
I don't think it's a good deal at all. I get 3 lines on AT&T all iPhone 6 plus and 30 gigs of data for $170.
My other concern would be Google, the notorious information broker, having access to cell info. I'm sure they have already figured out how they will monetize the venture.
You're on ATT? You're already being tracked a whole lot more thoroughly than Google is capable of. Worse they sell it. What the heck are you worried about Google for?
If one of the additional phones in the plan is a current model, the rate for an additional family member jumps from $15 to $40. When I got the iPhone 6 for a family member, my plan cost (for the exact same plan) went from $160/mo to $185/mo. Plus, any international calls, SMS, data, as well as tethering, are extra. I routinely spend an extra $30 - $60 on ATT's 'Passport' or 'Passport Plus' plans every couple of months.
The $40/mo would be because the newer phone was purchased with a subsidy that has to be paid off with a higher monthly fee. The prices quoted for Google's Project F*it don't include consideration of a potential subsidy either.
It's not clear if the Nexus phones are subsidized or not. I would imagine that are unsubsidized. Each person/member of a household would be required to have paid full price up front for the Nexus 6 to be able to make use of this plan, no?
I'm not sure MVNO subscribers care that much about a Nexus 6. This seems to be marketed to Nexus 6 owners, yet I don't see how this marginally more affordable plan will move the needle of Nexus sales. A few Android dorks will bite, but who else?
You can get the Nexus 6 on an installment plan. I wish the media and industry would quit using the term subsidized. To me the term subsidized means you're getting something free because somebody else is 'subsidizing' it for you. Installment is much better terminology because that's essentially what people are doing. They're paying off the price of their phone over time through monthly installments as part of their overall bill.
You're on ATT? You're already being tracked a whole lot more thoroughly than Google is capable of. Worse they sell it. What the heck are you worried about Google for? Ads scare you?
AT&T and Verizon customers can opt-out of much of their tracking.
Android is a fright. You can't even install an app without tacitly acquiescing to all of its requests to access your personal data, and apps can then run in the background without your permission/knowledge, happily harvesting your personal data.
AT&T and Verizon customers can opt-out of much of their tracking.
Android is a fright. You can't even install an app without acquiescing to all of its requests to access your personal data, and apps can potentially run in the background without your permission/knowledge.
So don't install an app you'e not comfortable with. All the permissions are disclosed beforehand. Do ATT and Verizon plainly disclose the tracking and sale of their users' information and offer an easy to find opt-out? I'd wager only a relatively tiny number of subscribers have any idea it's happening and even fewer know anything about opting out of it, much less know where to look.
I don't care if it means following Google's lead in this instance, but Apple should really do something similar and disrupt carriers.
They did disrupt the carriers. You used to have to buy a phone from your carrier that was carrier-locked and had to be a special carrier-specific model. It used to ship with manditory bloatware and apps could only be installed from the carrier's app stores, despite the fact that the apps were Java BREW apps that would probably run on all sorts of handsets. Some carriers even wanted to make you buy ringtones and content from them. It used to be that carriers dragged their feet on rolling out high speed networks because nobody wanted to pay for mobile data, because nobody surfed the web on those crappy flip phones with their WAP browsers.
How did we get from the world of 2006 to the world today? Who disrupted the carriers? Who took absolute control away from them and wouldn't even let them put their logos on phone? Think, think hard! Hint: starts with an 'A' and is also the name of a fruit. No, it's not apricot. Not avocado. Think harder...who disrupted the carriers back in 2007? Anyone know the company?
Becoming an MVNO is a race to the bottom, and all you're doing is reselling the real carrier's network. So as far as I'm concerned, there's "disruption=change for the better," vs. "disruption=race to the bottom."
Wow. I did not know that. What plan are you using and how much $?
Your current plan will support this (two lines Simple Choice for $100/month). The stated hot spot limit is 5GB, though I don't know that it's enforced.
Scrooggle the latest snake oil salesman, only for people who want to be f... Up the a...
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
You need to read more carefully.
See footnote, in red:
Savings every month
Save up to $25 a month on access charges for each AT&T NextSM or No Annual Contract smartphone you add to your Mobile Share Value plan versus a smartphone with a 2-year contract.*
*If you're currently getting these savings and you upgrade to a new 2-year contract, the savings will be lost. Restrictions apply.1See savings details.
Note from where to where, in red:
Unlimited international texting
Enjoy unlimited texting from the U.S. to the world.2
International texting capabilities and availability vary by country.
Exactly. It says it's going to cost you another $25/month if you want us to finance a phone for you on top of your wireless service. But the service alone is $15. Has nothing to do with a current model phone. I can add an iPhone 6 tomorrow to my service and it's still $15/month.
If you want to buy a $650 iPhone and only pay $200 up front, and finance the rest of it over 2 yrs so that your total payments for that $650 phone end up being $800, that's your crazy decision to make.
But when comparing wireless plans to wireless plans, let's just compare the plan cost and not include the cost of phones that you subsidized into your monthly payments.
Meaningless just like Google Fiber. Designed to make Google look good (marketing gimmick). This is no different than a store offering a product below cost (loss leader) to get people in the store.
If Google wants to shake up Internet or wireless they need to make it widely available. Limiting it to a small number of users (Nexus 6) or communities (Five) doesn't benefit enough people, nor will it do much to cause existing providers to be more competitive.
You know how Google is. Everything is always in beta.
Not surprising that TMo's CEO John Legere had something to say about this today.
"Google has well established their brand as a technology innovator that has benefited customers in a ton of fantastic ways. So, when our friends in Mountain View approached us with their ideas for changing up wireless, it was a no-brainer to team up with them again.
T-Mobile and Google go way back. In fact, we got together to launch the world's very first Android smartphone in 2008—the T-Mobile G1. Since then, we've worked together to bring several breakthrough innovations to market—most recently the Nexus 6, the very first Nexus that will have Wi-Fi Calling"
[SIZE=14px]Wow, if it's all as promised, I've got to say that that's pretty nice. A family of four will pay $80, plus, say another $50 or so for data (for example, our family of four uses almost never uses more than 4GB - 5GB a month, if that). <span style="line-height:1.4em;">That's substantially less than what ATT charges, esp. if a couple of phones in the family plan are current models.</span>
[/SIZE]
[SIZE=14px]I don't care if it means following Google's lead in this instance, but Apple should really do something similar and disrupt carriers.[/SIZE]
Keep in mind that T-Mobile or Sprint needs to work well in whatever area you generally habituate. For me, neither service has good coverage in my area, so I'd suffer from not being able to make calls, or have a lot of dropped calls.
Finally Google doesn't seem to be committed to any specific business model (other then monetizing search) for more then a few years. So if Google pisses off AT&T or Verizon and those carriers stop selling or supporting Google-branded phones, it's no big deal to Google. It's another story with Apple who has squeezed a lot of concessions out of the carriers, but has a commitment to staying in the smart phone market for the long-term and working with the carriers, unlike Google. Over at Google it's let's make a TV one day, and the next it's let's build some barges... or better yet, let's buy a robot company... I know ADHD kids who have a better attention span then Google management.
There is. A lot to comment on after I read all the posts. Yes, public wifi is ok for BS sites like reading appleinsider, for banking and shopping I use a VPN to my home with my iPhone 6.
Google monitoring everything and forcing advertisements, I'd expect it to be less $.
If you have a company discount and don't use it, then you should. My Verizon iPhone 6 on Att with %25 off and three uses come to about $40 a month each after taxes and fees. Amd that's for unlimited calls, texts and 15gb data which with roll over has been averaging more like 25Gb a month now.
If your on Att old plan and have not called them to change you plan with no contract Extention the. You need to call them. They changed my 10gb a month to 15gb a month with no hidden catches. Just call them.
Google should let other phone in it, not just their phone. So what if I'm just on T-Mobile and not sprint. That would be less calls anyway and T-Mobile has got better coverage since Att had to give them licensed frequencies in the U.S. When the purchase of T-Mobile from Att was blocked and failed.
Voice over LTE is great and I now get coverage were I used to have issues since they changed over my market.
Googles phone so the only one that can do sprint and T-Mobile, not sure if that's an acurate statement when looking at the iPhone 6 and apples one SIM card for all carrier solution. But I would need to do more research, as I mentioned I don't care for sprint so I never looked into it. I know my phone will do Verizon, Att and T-Mobile at the fastest data speeds and HD voice on all three network but never looked into the sprint side since I don't want them.
I wonder if the agreement of HD voice between Verizon, T-Mobile and Att will still work with this new Fi. These carriers agreed to work together and share HD voice between them as long as both call parties had the hardware that supports it. But sprint dropped out of that because they have some proprietary protocols in place and are not running standard spec CDMA. So they are the only U.S. Carrier blocking HD voice accross all US major carriers.
As for international I don't travel much, but do make international calls and I've had magic jack from the start at $20 a year with international at a cheaper per minute rate, I just use the app on my phone over my carriers data network for VoIP.
So will Fi be a flopFi? Only one phone to choose from and can't keep you current phone? Are people willing to only be told they don't have a choice in the phone and need to buy that one phone? Will people get tired of dropped calls when they are on the sprint side, will handoff between cd a and GSM-LTE work without loosing the call? Do people want everything they do on the phone monitored by Google when a little subpoena could give certain agencies full access to their everyday life privacy. What privacy, Google is already collecting everything from that phone and other android phones.
I guess only time will tell. But if I was Google I would drop the rates a little more for the launch with only one phone to choose from.
Comments
Why would they add other phones? They're most likely not making money on this deal, so it's an incentive to get a Nexus 6.
My other concern would be Google, the notorious information broker, having access to cell info. I'm sure they have already figured out how they will monetize the venture.
Use a VPN, and encrypt your data over a public WiFi.
It's $15/month for ANY smart phone you have on the network. Call AT&T to discuss. Sounds like they are over charging you.
International SMS and tethering are included. No additional cost.
You need to read more carefully.
See footnote, in red:
Savings every month
Save up to $25 a month on access charges for each AT&T NextSM or No Annual Contract smartphone you add to your Mobile Share Value plan versus a smartphone with a 2-year contract.*
*If you're currently getting these savings and you upgrade to a new 2-year contract, the savings will be lost. Restrictions apply.1 See savings details.
Note from where to where, in red:
Unlimited international texting
Enjoy unlimited texting from the U.S. to the world.2
International texting capabilities and availability vary by country.
For more details, see: http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html?WT.srch=1
Scrooggle the latest snake oil salesman, only for people who want to be f... Up the a...
You're on ATT? You're already being tracked a whole lot more thoroughly than Google is capable of. Worse they sell it. What the heck are you worried about Google for?
If one of the additional phones in the plan is a current model, the rate for an additional family member jumps from $15 to $40. When I got the iPhone 6 for a family member, my plan cost (for the exact same plan) went from $160/mo to $185/mo. Plus, any international calls, SMS, data, as well as tethering, are extra. I routinely spend an extra $30 - $60 on ATT's 'Passport' or 'Passport Plus' plans every couple of months.
The $40/mo would be because the newer phone was purchased with a subsidy that has to be paid off with a higher monthly fee. The prices quoted for Google's Project F*it don't include consideration of a potential subsidy either.
You can get the Nexus 6 on an installment plan. I wish the media and industry would quit using the term subsidized. To me the term subsidized means you're getting something free because somebody else is 'subsidizing' it for you. Installment is much better terminology because that's essentially what people are doing. They're paying off the price of their phone over time through monthly installments as part of their overall bill.
'Fee', 'Fo' and 'Fum' were taken?
You're on ATT? You're already being tracked a whole lot more thoroughly than Google is capable of. Worse they sell it. What the heck are you worried about Google for? Ads scare you?
AT&T and Verizon customers can opt-out of much of their tracking.
Android is a fright. You can't even install an app without tacitly acquiescing to all of its requests to access your personal data, and apps can then run in the background without your permission/knowledge, happily harvesting your personal data.
They did disrupt the carriers. You used to have to buy a phone from your carrier that was carrier-locked and had to be a special carrier-specific model. It used to ship with manditory bloatware and apps could only be installed from the carrier's app stores, despite the fact that the apps were Java BREW apps that would probably run on all sorts of handsets. Some carriers even wanted to make you buy ringtones and content from them. It used to be that carriers dragged their feet on rolling out high speed networks because nobody wanted to pay for mobile data, because nobody surfed the web on those crappy flip phones with their WAP browsers.
How did we get from the world of 2006 to the world today? Who disrupted the carriers? Who took absolute control away from them and wouldn't even let them put their logos on phone? Think, think hard! Hint: starts with an 'A' and is also the name of a fruit. No, it's not apricot. Not avocado. Think harder...who disrupted the carriers back in 2007? Anyone know the company?
Becoming an MVNO is a race to the bottom, and all you're doing is reselling the real carrier's network. So as far as I'm concerned, there's "disruption=change for the better," vs. "disruption=race to the bottom."
Wow. I did not know that. What plan are you using and how much $?
Your current plan will support this (two lines Simple Choice for $100/month). The stated hot spot limit is 5GB, though I don't know that it's enforced.
Scrooggle the latest snake oil salesman, only for people who want to be f... Up the a...
You need to read more carefully.
See footnote, in red:
Savings every month
Save up to $25 a month on access charges for each AT&T NextSM or No Annual Contract smartphone you add to your Mobile Share Value plan versus a smartphone with a 2-year contract.*
*If you're currently getting these savings and you upgrade to a new 2-year contract, the savings will be lost. Restrictions apply.1 See savings details.
Note from where to where, in red:
Unlimited international texting
Enjoy unlimited texting from the U.S. to the world.2
International texting capabilities and availability vary by country.
For more details, see: http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/data-plans.html?WT.srch=1
Exactly. It says it's going to cost you another $25/month if you want us to finance a phone for you on top of your wireless service. But the service alone is $15. Has nothing to do with a current model phone. I can add an iPhone 6 tomorrow to my service and it's still $15/month.
If you want to buy a $650 iPhone and only pay $200 up front, and finance the rest of it over 2 yrs so that your total payments for that $650 phone end up being $800, that's your crazy decision to make.
But when comparing wireless plans to wireless plans, let's just compare the plan cost and not include the cost of phones that you subsidized into your monthly payments.
"Google has well established their brand as a technology innovator that has benefited customers in a ton of fantastic ways. So, when our friends in Mountain View approached us with their ideas for changing up wireless, it was a no-brainer to team up with them again.
T-Mobile and Google go way back. In fact, we got together to launch the world's very first Android smartphone in 2008—the T-Mobile G1. Since then, we've worked together to bring several breakthrough innovations to market—most recently the Nexus 6, the very first Nexus that will have Wi-Fi Calling"
Keep in mind that T-Mobile or Sprint needs to work well in whatever area you generally habituate. For me, neither service has good coverage in my area, so I'd suffer from not being able to make calls, or have a lot of dropped calls.
Finally Google doesn't seem to be committed to any specific business model (other then monetizing search) for more then a few years. So if Google pisses off AT&T or Verizon and those carriers stop selling or supporting Google-branded phones, it's no big deal to Google. It's another story with Apple who has squeezed a lot of concessions out of the carriers, but has a commitment to staying in the smart phone market for the long-term and working with the carriers, unlike Google. Over at Google it's let's make a TV one day, and the next it's let's build some barges... or better yet, let's buy a robot company... I know ADHD kids who have a better attention span then Google management.
Yes, public wifi is ok for BS sites like reading appleinsider, for banking and shopping I use a VPN to my home with my iPhone 6.
Google monitoring everything and forcing advertisements, I'd expect it to be less $.
If you have a company discount and don't use it, then you should. My Verizon iPhone 6 on Att with %25 off and three uses come to about $40 a month each after taxes and fees. Amd that's for unlimited calls, texts and 15gb data which with roll over has been averaging more like 25Gb a month now.
If your on Att old plan and have not called them to change you plan with no contract Extention the. You need to call them. They changed my 10gb a month to 15gb a month with no hidden catches. Just call them.
Google should let other phone in it, not just their phone. So what if I'm just on T-Mobile and not sprint. That would be less calls anyway and T-Mobile has got better coverage since Att had to give them licensed frequencies in the U.S. When the purchase of T-Mobile from Att was blocked and failed.
Voice over LTE is great and I now get coverage were I used to have issues since they changed over my market.
Googles phone so the only one that can do sprint and T-Mobile, not sure if that's an acurate statement when looking at the iPhone 6 and apples one SIM card for all carrier solution. But I would need to do more research, as I mentioned I don't care for sprint so I never looked into it. I know my phone will do Verizon, Att and T-Mobile at the fastest data speeds and HD voice on all three network but never looked into the sprint side since I don't want them.
I wonder if the agreement of HD voice between Verizon, T-Mobile and Att will still work with this new Fi. These carriers agreed to work together and share HD voice between them as long as both call parties had the hardware that supports it. But sprint dropped out of that because they have some proprietary protocols in place and are not running standard spec CDMA. So they are the only U.S. Carrier blocking HD voice accross all US major carriers.
As for international I don't travel much, but do make international calls and I've had magic jack from the start at $20 a year with international at a cheaper per minute rate, I just use the app on my phone over my carriers data network for VoIP.
So will Fi be a flopFi? Only one phone to choose from and can't keep you current phone? Are people willing to only be told they don't have a choice in the phone and need to buy that one phone? Will people get tired of dropped calls when they are on the sprint side, will handoff between cd a and GSM-LTE work without loosing the call? Do people want everything they do on the phone monitored by Google when a little subpoena could give certain agencies full access to their everyday life privacy. What privacy, Google is already collecting everything from that phone and other android phones.
I guess only time will tell. But if I was Google I would drop the rates a little more for the launch with only one phone to choose from.