> It would fit so well into their premium brand of "your iPhone works the moment you step off the plane wherever your amazing life takes you".

If there's anything that would make me buy an iPhone, this is it. I travel a lot between the US and Europe; I'm using Fi at the moment even though I shouldn't actually have access to it. It's mind boggling to me the crazy things we can do with tech today, and not make it all work smoothly and reliably when you step a few meters off the border of whichever country you're in.

I'm kinda of amazed of the Internet and mobile situation in the US. I was in the Silicon Valley recently. Internet was terrible everywhere I went. Phone plans were incredibly expensive.

While my French phone plan, that I pay $25 a month, gave me unlimited calls and text messages, even in the US, and from France to the US or vice versa. On top of unlimited 4G in my country, I had 25Go of free 3G in the US for my trip. And it was faster than any Wifi I connected to: hotel, work, restaurant...

How is that possible that I was next to Cupertino and Mountain View, yet witnessed this ? This is supposed to be the super tech region of the world, yet it felt nothing like that.

That’s how awful cell carrier oligopoly is here. Wired internet is even worse, even in Silicon Valley. I have the choice of Comcast 100mbit Internet (used to be ~20mbit a few years ago) for ~$80 USD per month or nothing. Literally my only real high-speed choice is Comcast in every apartment I’ve rented in the Bay Area in the past 6 years. Many friends are in the same situation.

Think about that: ISPs in the US are so firmly entrenched, so highly organized and with such strong lobbies that even in the Bay Area it’s awful.

I want to believe that this will change, but I’ll bwlieve it when I see it. Google tried, and it looks like they’re scaling down their expectations for G Fiber rollouts. Wireless likely can’t work without some quantum leap in the tech, and the infra costs for a buildout are MASSIVE (on the order of tens-hundreds of billions for a nation wide network) plus you need permits for every eyesore tower that every city will individually fight you on. These are just some of the reasons that all the people and all the money in the valley can’t fix US ISPs.

Eh, it's not THAT bad. Back when I had T-mobile I had > 100 mbit/s LTE and worldwide (albeit slow outside of Canada or Mexico) data roaming for $50

I also still have 250 mbit/s internet with Comcast for $50 (slow upload though)

Keep in mind that the salary in silicon valley tends to be a lot higher, so those $50 are equivalent to $25 of what I had back in Germany.

That being said: It's true that the competition really doesn't seem to work all that great. It's not completely horrible though. I'm happier than with what I had in Germany.

Just to add insult to injury: Don't forget your French sim works without roaming across all EU member states

On the other hand there are countries like Luxembourg, where cellular data service in the middle of the capital is horrible. The guy in Orange shop who sold me a sim card said I might need to manually switch from 4G to 3G in some areas, because the reception is so bad. And it was bad pretty much everywhere, even on 3G.

I have T-Mobile's Simple Choice plan, and while I haven't flown too much internationally, the few times I have, my service has worked seamlessly.

My plan includes 4G coverage in Mexico and Canada, and 2G coverage in 100+ other markets (with the option to upgrade for 3G and 4G rates in those markets). Looking at [1] it appears the current plans may not offer this for free anymore, but it's still available.

[1] https://www.t-mobile.com/travel-abroad-with-simple-global

I believe the above commenter talks about the ease/pricing of Fi as much as the experience. I'm using Fi on my iPhone (and have for a while) - and it works worldwide for $10 / 1Gb. It's actually downright magical compared to other offers (even the Apple SIM powered ones).

The ease with T Mobile is there too. I pay $50/month for my plan, and calls, text, and data effectively works seamlessly in ~160 countries. If I want faster data in some of those countries, I can pay $10 extra.

Google Fi is $20/month for voice and text, plus a variable $10/month per GB up to 6GB where it caps out at $80/month.

Note that I'm not arguing against you, just wanted to clarify that the t mobile experience is just as seamless as Fi, in case I overcomplicated it.

T-Mobile even supports WiFi calling in the same way as Fi, if you want to enable it (handy for me at work, where I'm in a building built like a bunker that gets close to no reception on any network).

Also note TMobile supports Apple Watch LTE while Fi doesn’t and probably won’t.

Is 6GB seriously the best Google has to offer? I'm on a 7GB monthly plan and I find that limiting...

I guess we have different standards here in Europe.

As Larrysalibra said, 6GB is basically just the threshold for where you go from paying per GB to it being unlimited. If you use 3GB, you'll be charged $30 for saga. If you use 6GB, you'll be charged $60 for data, and if you use 9GB or 18GB or 30 GB you'll still only be charged $60 for data.

It doesn't stop at 6 gb, they stop charging you for data at 6 gb. It's "free" after that.

$10 buys you unlimited LTE in like half europe.

If you can actually get these plans using Apple SIM - it’d be order of magnitude cheaper.

I've used Travel SIMs in the past simply because although they're more expensive, at least they work and I know I'll probably have coverage.

Trying to figure out how to get a prepaid plan with a good amount of data that'll work everywhere in Europe isn't easy. Then there's issues about recharging the plan, and many of them don't accept foreign CCs, so you need to be in the country you purchased it in to buy a voucher from the carrier's store.

I also hadn't found any 'unlimited' data options on a prepaid SIM - they only appear to be on the more expensive contract plans. At least, based on my searches in France, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway.

Finland has unlimited (without the quotation marks) data on prepaid SIMs from all carriers. Usually for about 1€ per day or 20€ per month. Depending on the plan it will also include unlimited texts and talk.

I ended up using a reseller in Australia to get an "EE" SIM for an upcoming trip - feeling like I've been ripped off here as I paid significantly more than $10

Most of the prepaid SIMs I saw had heavy restrictions on tethering - can you point me in the right direction?

Are you travelling to the UK? There are loads of SIM cards for sale in arrivals, including EE.

While T-Mobile has 2G coverage for no additional charge outside of US/Mexico, in practice it's not very usable due to the extremely slow speeds. After trying to painfully use maps with that data plan, I had to switch to a regular 3G data plan so I could get on with being a tourist.

The “One Plus” plan has unlimited international 256 kbps LTE and is juuuuust fast enough to get by. The low latency of LTE is helpful to make it feel a lot faster than a 2G connection of similar speed.

Came here to say this.

Their service is amazing + it's completely spoiled me when I end up in Vietnam or another country they don't have coverage and I actually have to get a SIM card.

Such a killer service and I'm surprised more people don't talk about it.

I used to use T-Mobile, but the reason I switched to Fi was because outside of North America, the speed just isn’t there. Even when you pay for the upgraded “3G” speed, it has a low cap for max speed, something like .25 mbps.

You can buy packages for 4g, but they are ludicrously expensive. As in, so expensive they won’t even show you the prices until you are a customer. If I remember, it was in the order of something like $10 for 100mb

There is definitely a data usage threshold where Fi pricing is worse, but if you spend significant time abroad it is hard to beat.

Interesting!

I've only been to Mexico and Brazil since getting T-Mobile, but in both those cases I didn't have any speed issues with whatever they capped me at.

That said, I just looked and I can buy a 1GB international high speed "Data Pass" for $20, valid for 10 days. I didn't need one for any of my trips, but if that experience is atypical, I could see where Fi would be more attractive.

I've used TMobile One in Turkey, India, Armenia, Canada, and UK. And it auto connects to Mexico when I'm nearby too, all for free. Best I could ever ask from a carrier. I'm pretty anxious they're going to get bought out and cut this immediately.

That said, getting a local sim in foreign countries is nice but sometimes takes an annoying amount of work and passport scans.

The problem is that then you have to use T-Mobile in the US. I have it too, but only because I'm too stingy and lazy to switch. There are areas of San Francisco where it just has no signal, and forget about the Muni tunnels. It's kind of pathetic.

In my travels in the EU, I've never had to even lift a finger. It all worked smoothly and reliable. When I stepped off the plane on the other side I got a text letting me know I was in roaming mode and could talk/use data from my current plan. When I returned I got a text saying "welcome back, I hope you had a good trip".

Oh, and this is not a premium plan or anything. I pay 7.9EUR for unlimited calls and texts, and 1GB of data.

Within the EU, yea. The amazing thing about Fi is that it operates the same in pretty much any country with a stable government.

Three in the UK do the same thing and operate in 71 countries so far, however I get 13 GB of data instead of the unlimited. EE and O2 apparently offer similar deals.

The more i learn about US telecom, the more i wonder how the hell they managed to invent both the landline and mobile phone. Their infrastructure sounds like a balkanized mess...

First telephone was invented by an Italian (Antonio Meucci).

Probably the best landline system was/is in Germany. The ISDN was a complete digital system beginning from the 80s, having features that are not present in current mobile technologies. Calling was almost instant, probably only matched with VoLTE or SIP in local networks. Deutsche Telekom tried very hard to adapt most of the ISDN features to SIP.

> First telephone was invented by an Italian (Antonio Meucci).

Living in New York and granted a US patent...

> In 1834 Meucci constructed a type of acoustic telephone to communicate between the stage and control room at the Teatro of Pergola

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Meucci

You wrote "how they managed" and by "they" I assume you meant US-americans. Which is not the case for Meucci.

What do you mean by "calling was almost instant"?

You dial a number. The other party will start ringing.

And not just calling. There was no need for a lengthy handshake after the connection was setup for ISDN modems.

Not really a fair assessment. The 4 larger mobile providers are spilt between GSM and CDMA in the past CDMA phones wouldn’t work abroad, except maybe China. You would even have to buy a CDMA version of the iPhone. The big 4 just buy up all competitors and usually one tries to buy one of the others.

Geographically the US is much more expansive than the EU and more robust.

I would not compare infrastructure I would compare the regulations. The telcos created the tech and most likely the laws.

Regulation was the key difference. The EU mandated a common wireless standard (GSM) to be in use across all countries. The US let the market decide and ended up building 4-5 largely incompatible semi-nationwide networks.

Thankfully time, technology, and consolidation has now reduced that down to 2 (CDMA/LTE - Verizon, Sprint, GSM/LTE, AT&T, T-Mobile). LTE will eventually consolidate that down to 1.

CDMA is winding up in the US also as all providers move off to LTE leaving their legacy infrastructure to die off at scheduled EoL.

"I travel a lot between the US and Europe; I'm using Fi at the moment even though I shouldn't actually have access to it."

Would you elaborate ?

I am currently traveling in Europe and used the "Orange Holiday Europe" travel SIM which appears to do everything I need it to (tethering, calls to anywhere, etc.) and it "just worked" when I landed.

What alternatives to this would be worth looking into ?

I know it sounds like a first world problem but I don't like having to take care of my sim card situation when I travel.

When I fly I have enough on my mind already and I don't want to have to sorry about getting a new sim, changing plans, enabling something, changing numbers, ...

I just want my phone number, data, calls and texts. No fuss. Fi is expensive but gives me peace of mind, I never have to worry about my phone, I know it will work just as well as back home.

There are T-Mobile plans that work this way.

The T-Mobile plan is limited to high speed in North America, and 2G elsewhere. Even when you pay to upgrade to 3G, it’s capped at something like 1/4 MBps. It’s borderline unusable internationally.

> It’s borderline unusable internationally.

The T-Mobile plan has worked fine for me in both Australia and the UK, even for navigation.

... available to american customers.

Wake me up when it's the other way around :/

If you're in the UK, Three offer plans that are comparable (if I'm understanding correctly). "Feel at Home": http://www.three.co.uk/feel-at-home

If you're in the Netherlands, KPN offers a 100GB EU+US plan, and T-Mobile offers a Unlimited NL + 10GB EU+US plan (although you should boycott T-Mobile [1]).

It's not quite the entire world, but it might be useful if you travel to the US often.

[1] https://www.bof.nl/press/t-mobile-allowed-to-keep-violating-...

Is there any way I could get a decent KPN SIM prepaid while travelling (I'm not a resident)?

Probably because they’re making plenty of money from their existing relationships with carriers. There’s no reason for Apple to vertically integrate when they’re already the dominant player in their carrier relationships.

Google relies heavily on advertising revenue so needs to interject any time there's a threat to that. Doesn't matter if it's a web browser that defaults to bing or an ISP that interjects their own ads.

On the other hand, Apple relies heavily on hardware sales for revenue.

In the EU, you don't even need that. Roaming is included in all of EU's countries. My operator (Free) also includes the USA.

> Roaming is included in all of EU's countries

Kind of - if you buy monthly plan that’s 2X more expensive (at least in Eastern Europe).

In the EU roaming charges were abolished last year.

> However, if you have a very cheap mobile data unit price (less than €3.85 / GB in 2017), your operator may apply a "fair use" limit for data that is lower than your domestic allowance when you are roaming.

Source: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-tel...

Fair use still means more than nil. AFAIK, this was included to avoid that people buy cheap plans in countries they don't live. For all plans I've seen so far, the allowance was sufficient to cover frequent travel, just not enough if you're only abroad.

The "fair use limit" is to prevent expats using a SIM card from a country with cheaper tariffs in a country where higher rates apply

Yes and in turn operators just created new “European” plans.

In France they didn't, what do these "European" plans do? Since you are legally allowed to use any local plan when you are abroad (except if your plan is less than 3,85€/GB indeed, then your operator can decide to give you less data or charge you more within this limit).

I'm just using my regular 10€/40GB plan whenever I am abroad and it works fine.

> In France they didn't The reason being it was already more expensive.

Nothing stops you getting cheap plan from Eastern Europe and use it in west (where cost of operations are higher).

Hmm, law does stop you from doing that, as you need to actually live in the place you subscribe to your plan.

Also, I'm not sure it's that cheaper in the East, I can't really find plans that are significantly cheaper than 40 GB per month for 10 euros.

50 GB in Poland is 100 zloty with Orange for example, so 23 euros.

EU, not eastern Europe. But wouldn't surprise me if the roaming charges were abolished there as well

If you go into any of the major retailers in the US, the iPhone is already the first-class device. Why would they want to be in the messy business of running a carrier, likely dependent on the partners they'd then be screwing over, while they built their own network from the ground up. On the other hand, maybe they'd just purchase Sprint or Verizon.

> Why would they want to be in the messy business of running a carrier

Does Fi run the carrier? I thought it used existing carriers and just supported seamless transition between them (and wifi). Regardless, the motivation would be to get that market they're missing that doesn't use one of the big 4. Granted Apple has never catered to that market, so not sure why they would now (it'd actually be detrimental to them IMO).

EDIT: Oh, and to the GP's point, seamless international use of your phone is a premium feature that might be valuable to customers. You could easily say "why do ____, they are already considered first class" for any new feature.

Fi's "included" roaming sounds great, until you realize how pathetically expensive even their domestic prices are.

Fi's base price[0] is $20/mo + tax. Hallon (my current provider) will sell you 8GB/mo of data for $18/mo, tax included.[1] With Fi that would cost you.. $80/mo + tax. Hallon doesn't actually have anything comparable to that, price-wise; their most expensive plan is 100GB/mo at ~$40.

And no, population density is not an excuse either. According to Wikipedia[2], the US' population density is 33 ppl/km², where Sweden has 23 ppl/km².

Doesn't seem to be the economy either, the GDP per capita seems to within ~20%[3], and that's before taking into account the massive difference in income equality.

I'd love if someone could explain how this price difference is somehow reasonable, because this just boggles my mind completely.

[0]: https://fi.google.com/about/plan/

[1]: https://www.hallon.se/vara-produkter/mobiltelefoni/mobilabon...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

As a digital nomad with Fi, its roaming and service is amazing.

What you are complaining about is the US Cell market, which is awful and has horrible prices compared to the rest of the world.

I usually buy a local sim card for data because it's usually cheaper than Fi per GB. However, I pick a different carrier than what I can access through Fi so I have more reliable access for work (and can use both using Speedify).

Having immediate data on arrival, a backup cell network, up to 10 data sim cards for free and access to my US phone number and it's incoming/outgoing calls via data on Hangouts is a godsend when traveling and working remotely.

And while you can end up paying $80/mo if you use >6GB, you won't pay any more than that even if you use more (though they will start throttling you at 15GB).

Same here! If I'm only in a country for a couple of weeks, I'll just stick with Fi. If I'm there longer I'll pick up a local sim as it's usually way cheaper.

Do you find you need to use Speedify and tether often?

I wonder if speedify is detected by the carriers - most SIMs outside my country appear to have heavy tethering restrictions.

Google Fi has no problem with you tethering on your main SIM, but doesn't support in on the free, data only sim cards it provides.

> I'd love if someone could explain how this price difference is somehow reasonable, because this just boggles my mind completely.

On regional differences, I see price differences as usually a combination of charging what they can, who they have to or want to compete against, cost of doing business, and how seriously they take the market. Or put more simply: either they have optimized for most money or they don't care enough.

Same argument in Asia.

1gb in Philippines is not even 50 peso. it's $10 USD with fi. 50 peso is $1. Prepaid.

in Japan 6GB pocket wifi is about 1500JPY, prepaid. With Fi, 1gb is $10.

In Malaysia, unlimited unthrottled LTE is $14 USD.

They're profiting like bandits.

I just run up the support and get what I want usually.

Fi created their own arbitrage opportunity out of convenience and brand image.

If I land in Thailand, how fast is the Hallon service? What about Brazil, South Africa, Russia or Australia?

Their are cheaper plans within the USA for domestic data usage, if that is all you want. That’s not the point of Fi though

The speed will be fine, but it'll be pretty expensive outside the EU.

But that's hardly a problem anyway since getting a local SIM pays off quickly, Fi or not.

When you get off the plane in Thailand, you’ll get an SMS if you are roaming on a foreign carrier to use a local prepay service without needing a custom SIM. Not sure how they do it.