A few years ago, Google launched Project Fi, a wireless phone service that leaned predominantly on WiFi, but used the Sprint and T-Mobile networks for cellular backup. Initially, the company offered unlimited talk, text, tethering and international roaming for $20 a month. After that, Project Fi charged you a flat $10 per each additional gigabyte of GB for cellular data whether in the US or abroad (read: $10 for 1 GB, $20 for 2 GB, or $30 for 3 GB) -- up to 10 GB per month. Users got refunds at month's end for any data not consumed.
Today, Google
announced that they're shaking up pricing in a number of new ways.
One, Google says it's introducing something called "bill protection." Under this new option, users who consume more than a set amount of data during a month will have their total charges for calls, texts and data capped at a maximum of $80 per month. Like other similar "unlimited" options, users will have their connection throttled for the remainder of their billing cycle. Your throttling cap will vary depending on how many users are on your plan, notes Google.
"If you’re a super heavy data user, you’ll experience slower data speeds in months when you’ve consumed more than 15 GB of data (less than 1% of current Fi users today)," notes the company. "But as always, you’ll have the power to customize your plan, and you can opt out of slower speeds by paying $10/GB for your individual data usage above 15 GB."
While Google is calling this bill protection, it's really just Project Fi's answer to the shift by major carriers to unlimited data, which has resulted in Project Fi seeming slightly less revolutionary than it did at launch.
"With Bill Protection you’ll never have to pay for unlimited data in months when you don’t actually need it," Google says. "If you only use 1.4 GB of data, at the end of the month you’ll pay just $34 instead of $80. So no matter how much data you use, you can save money with Bill Protection every month."
Google's bill protection begins rolling out today to individual subscribers and group plans. The company says that current Fi subscribers will see it appear on their next billing cycle. There's more detail available on Project Fi's new pricing plan over at the
full announcement.