Going the MVNO route involves potential risks for cellular companies and their customers alike…but also lots of possible upsides.
In conjunction with my recent deeper re-engagement with EDN from an employment standpoint, I not only reconfigured an existing computer in a LAN-isolating fashion but also set up a separate work mobile phone line. For hardware, I pulled out of storage the Google Pixel 7 that I’d mothballed at the conclusion of my prior “day job”. And since I was now on my own from a cellular provider-and-plan selection standpoint, I decided to finally give Google Fi Wireless a try.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend?
Originally known as Project Fi, then Google Fi (with “Wireless” more recently stuck on the end), this particular provider is, like US Mobile and others both in the US and around the world, a Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO). Wikipedia’s entry starts by describing a MVNO as:
A wireless communications services provider that does not own the wireless network infrastructure over which it provides services to its customers. An MVNO enters into a business agreement with a mobile network operator (MNO) to obtain bulk access to network services at wholesale rates, then sets retail prices independently. An MVNO may use its own customer service, billing support systems, marketing, and sales personnel, or it could employ the services of a mobile virtual network enabler (MVNE).
That high-level description doesn’t dive into the minutia of various MVNO implementation variants, nor do I plan to do so here. Broadly speaking, I’ll stick with the high-level observation that it’s an intriguing business model that sometimes leads to startup company “flameouts”. Other times, it results in acquisitions by prior partners, with the MVNO either fully subsumed by the purchaser or maintaining a separate marketing identity and subsequently referred to as a “flanker brand” or as a “captive” versus prior “independent” MVNO. And some companies, such as Google Fi Wireless, remain independent MVNOs long-term.
MVNOs, perhaps obviously, don’t need to shoulder the substantial incremental costs of building out and maintaining a nationwide cellular network. Nor do they need to spend the money necessary to both secure and retain spectrum licenses. And, because they’re generally smaller, their promotional budgets are also leaner than their Mobile Network Operator (MNO) partners. But they also can’t be freeloaders, leading to the obvious next question…what’s in it for the MNO? Incremental revenue (taking the form of bulk, per-customer and/or per-packet regular payments) from MVNO partners, generated by the incremental use of any available excess network resources that would otherwise lie fallow, i.e., go to waste.
Therein lies the potential risk with MVNOs: if the MNO’s own customers consume the entirety of network capacity, there’ll be none left over for the MVNO’s own customers. Averting this outcome requires both upfront and ongoing negotiations between the MVNO and MNO, with “throttling” (dynamic bandwidth adjustments in reaction to capacity utilization changes) an interim step prior to, and hopefully also preventing, MVNO service shutoffs at heavy-use times.
An encouraging first date…
Google initially launched its MVNO service in 2015 alongside the Nexus 6 smartphone, in partnership with both Sprint and T-Mobile; the latter subsequently acquired the former in 2020. Google Fi Wireless currently comes in four plan tier options, all delivering 5G data rates:
- Flexible (“Pay for the data you use”)
- $35 per month for 2 lines + data ($18 per line + $10/GB), for example, or $20 per month for 1 line + data
- Data for $10/GB
- High-speed hotspot tethering
- International data in 200+ destinations
- Connectivity for tablets and laptops
- Full connectivity for select smartwatches
- Unlimited Essentials (“Our most affordable plan”)
- $60 per month for 2 lines ($30 per line), for example, or $35 per month for 1 line
- 30 GB of high-speed data
- Full connectivity for select smartwatches
- Unlimited Standard (“Hotspot tethering for your devices”)
- $80 per month for 2 lines (or $40 per line), for example, or $50 per month for 1 line
- 50 GB of high-speed data
- 25 GB of high-speed hotspot tethering
- International data in Canada and Mexico
- Full connectivity for select smartwatches
- Unlimited Premium (“Maximum perks & global connectivity”)
- $110 per month for 2 lines (or $55 per line), for example, or $65 per month for 1 line
- 100 GB of high-speed data
- 50 GB of high-speed hotspot tethering
- International data in 200+ destinations
- Connectivity for tablets and laptops
- Full connectivity for select smartwatches
- 6 months of YouTube Premium
- 100 GB of storage with Google One
The above pricing is standard; transient and varying-details pricing promotions that dip below the “MSRPs” are common. I’d even suggest that promotions are the rule versus the exception, not only with Google Fi Wireless but other MVNOs more broadly, further extending to all mobile operators more generally. For my new work line (in which, judging from the phone calls, voicemails and text messages I’ve subsequently received, I inherited a phone number formerly used by a Verizon customer named Robert with really bad credit), I went with the Unlimited Standard plan, since it included hotspot support as well as data support for my Pixel Watch. And at the time I signed up, since I was bringing my own phone, Google was offering half-off the published monthly rate for the first year. $25 per month for one line of service: not too shabby.
…led to a deeper relationship
After a few weeks of trying out the Google Fi Wireless, positively assessing both the company’s customer service and coverage robustness (particularly important in my Rocky Mountains foothills rural locale), I belatedly switched my personal line from AT&T over to Google Fi Wireless, too. I’d been on AT&T since mid-2010 (I’d switched to it from T-Mobile, ironically; nothing like going full circle!) the data portion of the monthly fee was “true” unlimited (i.e., non-throttled) and originally $30. By the time I canceled nearly sixteen years later, it had risen to $45/month but added visual voicemail and had also migrated from 3G (UMTS HSPA) to (4G LTE). More generally, here’s a breakdown of what I was paying per month:
I’d (too long) clung to it primarily due to its true-unlimited data nature; AT&T no longer offered this specific plan option, but I was “grandfathered” in as long as I didn’t cancel. As just noted, AT&T had upgraded it from 3G to 4G at no incremental charge (at the time; the $15/month adder was tacked on later as multiple $5/month increments). But the company declined to further upgrade it to 5G (not just gratis but at all); the “5GE” icon on my phone was marketing fluff, instead reflecting 4G LTE Advanced service. And since my plan didn’t support hotspot capabilities and the data allotment was therefore restricted to use solely by the phone itself, I was woefully undershooting its “unlimited” usage potential each month, anyway.
Instead, this time I went with Google Fi Wireless’s “Unlimited Premium” plan. Twice as much high-speed data included in the base price per month, twice as much of that also shareable with other devices via integrated hotspot support. Now’s as good a time as any to describe what Google Fi Wireless means by “unlimited”, i.e., what happens after you hit a plan’s per-month included-data threshold (save for the “Flexible” plan, where you pay $10/GB from the get-go):
- The data actually keeps flowing at no extra charge, albeit at a substantially “throttled” rate: 256 Kbps downstream.
- If you want more high-speed data within that month, you can incrementally purchase it at the $10/GB rate shown in the earlier bullet lists.
Data details
Speaking of data, the “Unlimited Premium” plan also includes up to four data-only SIMs at no extra charge, usable in cellular-cognizant devices such as my Surface Pro X and Surface Pro 7+/8 laptops, as well as my various iPad tablets (one’s in my 11” iPad Pro now, in fact) along with any dedicated cellular hotspot devices. Their data usage, in addition to that of my smartphone (both natively and via hotspot) and watch cumulatively goes against the plan’s per-month usage limit.
And speaking of dedicated cellular hotspot devices, the high-end NETGEAR Nighthawk M6 MR6110 I talked about back in mid-March:
is carrier-locked to AT&T. And although the mid-range Franklin A50 also covered there:
initially seemed to be third-party-unlockable, Unlocklocks wasn’t able to get me an unlock code after all (although to its credit, the company quickly refunded me in full after I submitted an order with the device IMEI). The low-end (LTE-only) Franklin T9, on the other hand:
is natively a T-Mobile-centric device. And since Google Fi Wireless runs on T-Mobile’s network, I was able to get up and running straightaway after ordering, receiving and activating a data SIM. For 5G purposes, I sprung for two more used hotspot devices (this time T-Mobile supportive), in both cases bought off eBay and manufactured by Inseego: the high-end MiFi X Pro 5G M3000:
and mainstream M2000 5G MiFi:
Pinching pennies
How much did this all cost? That’s perhaps the best part of all. For one thing, I’m getting $10/month off the normal $65 monthly service rate for the first two years. And I’m also getting a free Pixel 10 (the one below is “Indigo”, mine’s “Obsidian”):
a smartphone I’d initially covered during last August’s intro and I’ll write more about next week. Normally $799 for my 128 GByte variant, Google did an upfront-acquisition discount to $499. That’s a notable markdown as-is, although given that the Pixel 11 family is seemingly enroute, I’ve already seen discounts (although not to this degree) elsewhere already, too. The remaining to-free discount amount takes the form of monthly credits against the service cost, again spread out over 24 months. My Pixel 7 phones are scheduled to fall off the supported device list next October (a two-year extension to the original expiration, mind you), so I’d already been looking for a replacement anyway. I already have a Pixel 9a, which I’d traded in my earlier Pixel 6a to acquire, queued up as the eventual replacement for the “work” Pixel 7; I’ll keep both of them as spares.
There’s also one other monthly expense reduction that I’m considering as well. Conceptually, at least, the data service delivered by the Google Fi Wireless “Unlimited Premium” plan’s data-only SIMs is functionally redundant with the AT&T 5G data service that I still have active. Granted, I’m getting a $20/month discount from AT&T off the normal $55 plan rate. And the fact that just a few months ago, I spent a few hundred dollars on AT&T-only hotspots and accessories (extra batteries, cases, etc.) is also giving me pause. But the AT&T 5G plan, although remarkably fast especially on the external antennae-supportive high-end hotspot device, only provides 5 GBytes per month at the nominal fee rate. And a bit more than a dollar per day, $420/year said another way, is money that I could redirect elsewhere or “bank” for the future.
Not a shill
In closing, in case you were wondering, Google doesn’t have any idea that I’ve written this piece. I’m just a happy (so far, at least) customer who also finds the overall MVNO business model interesting. Analogies to the MVNO-and-MNO relationship that come to mind include:
- The semiconductor foundry model, although in this case, TSMC and its foundry-only kin aren’t simultaneously also acting as merchant chip suppliers, and
- Deep learning model developers who license them for use by other software-and-services providers, although in this case, open-source model alternatives also exist
Ironically, in looking back at the June 2010 post that had kicked off my move to AT&T as I wrapped up this writeup, I realized that I’d started it out as follows:
Ever experience one of those situations where, afterward, you wonder why it took you so long to tackle the undertaking? That’s what I’m feeling right about now.
With respect to my current situation, I couldn’t have said it any better myself. Wait…I did. 
Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
—Brian Dipert is the associate editor, as well as a contributing editor, at EDN.
Related Content
- De-commingling LAN equipment: It’s all in what you call it
- From T-Mobile To AT&T: It Couldn’t Have Been More Easy
- Verizon’s (and others’) 5G: underwhelming is putting it mildly
- Cellular hotspots: Multi-option evaluation thoughts
- If you made it through the schtick, Google’s latest products were pretty fantastic
The post Try Google Fi (Wireless)? The perks-for-the-price are why appeared first on EDN.