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posted by martyb on Wednesday April 22 2015, @10:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the like-the-good-old-days-of-compuserv-and-prodigy dept.

Google is launching a wireless service soon that will charge you for data used, not bulk rates like current carriers:

The service, which would compete with local wireless providers like AT&T and Verizon, is expected to let customers pay only for the data they use on the network. That would mean users only pay when they make calls, listen to music or use apps, as opposed to common wireless service agreements that charge a bulk rate for a certain amount of data.

What Google wants to do is somewhat unique, according to the Journal's report. The company plans to offer two types of services that overlap. When users are on Wi-Fi, their phone calls and other data would use that connection. When not on a Wi-Fi signal, customers would use common cellular radio signals, which are more costly.

Google isn't building its own wireless network to do this. Instead, the Internet giant has reportedly made a deal with US carriers Sprint and T-Mobile to use their networks. For now, this scheme is only expected to be available on Google's Nexus 6 smartphone.

The devil is in the details, of course, what price the data? How good the coverage? Google has tantalized us for years with prospects of its Fiber, unfortunately still unavailable in backwaters like New York City, so it's a bit hard to get excited about this one. On the other hand, maybe it could disrupt cell carriers everywhere?

Update: Google's Project Fi service has been officially announced. It is currently limited to Nexus 6 owners in the United States.

With Project Fi, Google starts plans at $20 per month for unlimited domestic calling and unlimited domestic + international texting. On top of that you can select how much data you believe you will need, with the cost being $10/GB. The unique aspect of Project Fi when compared to other network operators is how Google is changing the situation with unused data. Rather than rolling it over or having it disappear, Google simply credits you for the difference. For example, a user who pays $30 for 3GB per month may only use 1.4GB that month. In that situation, Google will credit them $16 for the data they did not use. [...] Given the rounding, they might as well just charge $1 for every 100MB used, as any overages are charged as the same rate as the data in the plan itself.

Google is also taking much of the pain out of roaming in other nations. The data you purchase for your Project Fi plan is usable in 120 different countries, although it's limited to a speed of 256Kbps. Google's network also extends beyond cellular carriers, with Google's network configured to automatically utilize public hotspots as part of the network itself. WiFi calling is supported, and so the transition between cellular and WiFi should be seamless in theory. Google is also promising that information will be encrypted so that users can have their privacy preserved when using public WiFi.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 22 2015, @11:45PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Wednesday April 22 2015, @11:45PM (#174165) Journal

    They claim to have nailed the "seamless transition". I'm sure the early adopters will let us know more...

    Project Fi works to get technology out of the way so you can communicate through whichever network type and device you're using. Wherever you're connected to Wi-Fi—whether that's at home, your favorite coffee shop or your Batcave—you can talk and text like you normally do. If you leave an area of Wi-Fi coverage, your call will seamlessly transition from Wi-Fi to cell networks so your conversation doesn’t skip a beat. We also want to help phone numbers adapt to a multi-screen world. With Project Fi, your phone number lives in the cloud, so you can talk and text with your number on just about any phone, tablet or laptop. So the next time you misplace your phone, you can stay connected using another screen. Check out how it works. [google.com]

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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:54AM

    by frojack (1554) on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:54AM (#174177) Journal

    Yeah, but the only way that can work (regardless of their uninformative info-graphic) is if the call is ALWAYS going via VOIP/SIP, most likely to Google-Voice servers.

    Because, otherwise, as you walk away from the coffee shop, your wifi gets weak, they would have to initiate a voice call over carrier's facilities, but the other say a land line, is already busy, and you can't call it.

    Same when walking into a wifi area, from cellular. You have to terminate the cell call, establish a sip/voip connection, without disrupting the call.

    Even T-Mobile (who offers wifi calling) tells you that calls transitioning from wifi to cellular or back is likely to be dropped.

    Third party sip clients can carry a call as you transition, because its all TCP. I've done that successfully with CSipSimple. (its never as clean a handover as from cell tower to cell tower, but it does work).

    Wifi-Calling has been built into every Android phone from the beginning, but banned by most of the carriers (hence the name wifi-calling). Its nothing but sip/voip I'm betting google has talked them out of that ban, and is doing it all via wifi calling, probably using just about zero carrier minutes, - all data.

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    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 23 2015, @02:08AM

      by frojack (1554) on Thursday April 23 2015, @02:08AM (#174180) Journal

      Actually, if you look carefully at that animated info-graphic, you see it goes from wifi to LTE and back again.
      LTE is a designation for a data network, not a voice network. That info-graphic never says it goes to the carrier's voice network.

      In truth, LTE means long term evolution, where all voice is going to go tcp on the net, When completed, LTE will mean there won't need to be any voice service, only data.

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