Last May, we took a close look at Google’s Project Fi and it’s potential for being a high quality, low cost cellular provider capable of introducing much needed communication options for arts organizations.
At that time, Google only offered individual plans, which was admittedly a drawback if you wanted to manage several user plans under a single billing account. Fortunately, Google launched a new group plan option in late 2016 that allows you to add additional users to an existing plan at a cost of $15 per user.
Group Overview
- You can add up to five members (for a total of six per account).
- Group roles include Owner, Manager, and Member:
- Owners can assign different roles for any member,
- add and remove members,
- see every member’s current cycle details, including international call logs,
- edit any member’s data plan and international settings,
- set and receive notifications for every member’s data usage limits,
- pause Project Fi service for any member,
- pause Project Fi cellular data service for any member,
- start device protection for any of their own purchases,
- And file claims for and cancel a device protection plan under their name.
- Managers can add and remove members,
- see every member’s current cycle details, including international call logs,
- edit any member’s data plan and international settings,
- set and receive notifications for every member’s data usage limits,
- pause Project Fi service for any member,
- pause Project Fi cellular data service for any member,
- and file claims for and cancel a device protection plan under their name that they got before joining your group.
- Members can see their own current cycle details, including call logs,
- edit their own call and message settings,
- see their data usage limits and receive notifications,
- pause or cancel their own Project Fi service,
- file claims for a device protection plan under their name that they got before joining your group,
- And cancel any existing device protection plans under their name that they got before joining your group.
Although Groups are limited to a max of six users, that’s a good step in the right direction and for smaller budget organizations, that would likely be enough users to cover the entire office staff.
Everything else that’s great about the program remains the same:
- There are no annual contracts.
- There’s only one plan: a $20 flat fee for unlimited talk and text and $10 for each Gigabyte (GB) of data.
- Data accessed using Wi-Fi does not count against your plan totals.
- Unused data is rolled over as prorated credit to the following month, so if you buy 2GB of data for $20 and only use 1.4GB over the course of the month, you get a $6 credit on the following month’s bill.
New Phones!
Another change since our initial review is Google now offers an additional phone options in the form of two models from their recently released Pixel line. The Pixel and Pixel XL run $649 and $769 respectively and both devices generate a regular stream of very positive reviews. But rest assured, the wildly affordable (and high quality) Nexus 5x is still available for only $249.
Granted, the phone selection is still limited compared to other providers but the reality is unless you have a very specific need to use a device not included in their list of approved phones, you should have zero problem migrating to any one of the devices they offer.
Resources
- Project Fi homepage
- Project Fi Group FAQ
- Project Fi General FAQ
- Project Fi coverage map
- Project Fi Support Documentation(a pro user level secret resource for those with very specific service and device questions).
- Project Fi Help Center
- Project Fi Phone Overview
