US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
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US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
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Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#2Url changed from http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/06/08/us-cellular-now-a-pa..., which points to this.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#3Its good to see them expanding the networks, if only a little. I've been on Project Fi for ~6 months or so and its been a fairly mediocre experience so far, but it works well enough for the price point I suppose.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#4Good to see the network growing!
Looking at US Cellular's coverage map (https://www.uscellular.com/coverage-map/coverage-indicator.h...), this news won't benefit the sf bay area, but help users in the northwest, northeast, and midwest.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#5Its good to see them expanding the networks, if only a little. I've been on Project Fi for ~6 months or so and its been a fairly mediocre experience so far, but it works well enough for the price point I suppose.
Can you expand on your experience? Is there just not enough coverage or is it something else that makes it mediocre? Where are you located? I was thinking of switching from Verizon (bay area) and would be interested to hear from someone who's already using it.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#6Its good to see them expanding the networks, if only a little. I've been on Project Fi for ~6 months or so and its been a fairly mediocre experience so far, but it works well enough for the price point I suppose.
Can you expand on your experience? Is there just not enough coverage or is it something else that makes it mediocre? Where are you located? I was thinking of switching from Verizon (bay area) and would be interested to hear from someone who's already using it.
As someone from the bay area who has also had a mediocre experience, I can maybe answer: Speeds have been fine, but there are areas where it'll show full bars but provide no data (like in BART stations, my hunch is that those use femtocells that don't handle FI users properly). Additionally, occasionally it'll swap networks (I think, goes from LTE/HSPA/3G) and the 'swaps' have like 30 second switchover times. Then there's the annoying app that tries to connect you to open wifi networks, but usually connects you to something that requires login which means your data just breaks (it's an app you can turn off, just an annoying experience). The price isn't actually competitive, Cricket would be cheaper for the amount I use (~3GB). Also, the benefits of being on multiple networks don't really matter in urban/urbanish areas, since TMo/Sprint both are trying to reach the same dense areas -- and despite having two networks, both lack significantly outside major urban areas. For instance, I lose coverage on the drive from the Bay Area to Sacramento.
But the worst is shortcodes and SMSes -- some weird configuration at FI meant that no shortcode texts came or went. I got error messages when I tried to use Magic (the texting startup). I never received 2FA texts while logging to to my bank or to github. I contacted support and they told me it was because those services used an http gateway, and that Fi just did not support that. I later found out that the support person was just wrong, and I escalated up support to a tech who 'reset' specific shortcodes on my account, which means I now can use 2FA for my banks/github, but I had to specifically find the shortcodes they used to get them whitelisted.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#7This is really great, but I'm still not really wanting to switch because I'd have to replace my Nexus 5.
It isn't dead yet, and I can't really justify the cost.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#8Its good to see them expanding the networks, if only a little. I've been on Project Fi for ~6 months or so and its been a fairly mediocre experience so far, but it works well enough for the price point I suppose.
Can you expand on your experience? Is there just not enough coverage or is it something else that makes it mediocre? Where are you located? I was thinking of switching from Verizon (bay area) and would be interested to hear from someone who's already using it.
Another anecdotal piece of evidence, my wife switched to Fi from ATT, I stayed on ATT. It's extremely common for my calls not to register on her phone, it just rings through to voicemail and she gets nothing showing on her Nexus. We've also had issues where text messages were delayed by hours, with no indication that it didn't go through.
It's cheap, but I guess you get what you pay for, we're in a major metro area.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#9Huh, I did not know until just now that US Cellular owned their own network. I could've sworn that Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint were the only four network owners in America and US Cellular was an MVNO. Guess that says something about either the quality of their network or the quality of their marketing.
Re: US Cellular Now a Part of Project Fi's Network
#10This is great news, as we have quite a bit of coverage by them here (Midwest). I feel like I see a lot of people mention issues with Fi on the web, I must be one of the lucky few that have not only had no issues, but stellar performance all around.