ATT has provided the best service of any carrier while traveling, so I will use them.
Really? My experience with AT&T while traveling has been pretty awful. In the US, in rural areas, Verizon is better. And outside the US, Google Fi gives you international data roaming as part of the base package. One of the reasons I switched to Google Fi is because it's so much better when traveling.
For coverage it’s Verizon > AT&T > T-Mobile. So maybe it was awful compared to Verizon, but it can be worse. I remember a doctor friend I was hiking a mountain with (La Plata, a 14k ft peak in Colorado) who took a patient call at the very summit.
As a tmo customer I know I’m essentially off-grid in much of the country when I’m outside many metropolitan areas.
I used Google Fi for a while, and while I'd love to use them as a primary carrier again, I can't until they choose to support add-on SIMs for watches. As a Google Fi and YoutubeTV customer, I cannot wait until I no longer have to give AT&T any money at all.
The only thing with Fi is that it is T-Mobile, and you'll always be in a lower priority block of customers compared to people paying for T-Mobile directly, which mean you'll see slower traffic in congested areas at peak times (including e.g. during rush hour traffic).
Thats not true, Google Fi has the same priority as postpaid T-Mobile. This is something MVNOs negotiate in their contracts with carriers, not something thats true across the board.
Discount MVNOs increase their margins by buying wholesale deprioritized data while Google Fi has negotiated the no deprioritization.
Is this talked about somewhere? All I see is this reddit post[0] by u/Peterfield53, which looks like a very active user on r/GoogleFi but doesn't seem to be a Googler or otherwise a Google Fi support agent.
>QCI 6 is applied to all of T-Mobile's postpaid and prepaid plans (except for Essentials) and Google Fi which also has QCI 6 as well. This means if you want the absolute best from T-Mobile, you want to get a plan directly from them. Even their cheap $10 prepaid 1GB Connect plan has priority data.
You literally land in a new country, turn your phone back on and you get a "Welcome to [country] - your data rate is the same" message almost anywhere.
Personally - I've flown from Taiwan to Brazil to Amsterdam and then back to the US and I don't have to think about my phone. It just works.
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Outside of the travel use-case, I would also probably pick something else, but if I know I'm going to be travelling, I'll switch back to Fi.
With eSim and the Airalo app, international travel is fairly painless. It costs a few bucks and a couple minutes to setup (which can be done while waiting at the airport to leave) to get a data-only sim for your destination county. If you're paying for an expensive domestic account for international reasons instead of a cheaper $40/mo eg Mint mobile plan, it might be worth investigating theirs plans to see if it would end up saving money, given your travel requirements.
Fi is $40 a month for the more expensive plans, plus $10/gb until the plan hits 10gb, at which case it's free but they might throttle.
And the key thing is I just don't have to think about it. I can't forget to register a new account, I don't have to worry about esoteric sign up requirements for certain countries (ex: Brazil wants a CPF for fucking everything), and I can't get stuck without a connection and then not be able to setup the next step.
I still have my Sprint plan. This is how it works by default. (Sprint + gvoice = google fi; before gfi you could merge your gvoice and sprint accounts which was really cool. Then they cancelled that and started gfi) Since the TMo merger, I suspect gfi is still using the Sprint stuff.
I've been to every state in the contingent US, most many more times than once, and spent most of my time in rural areas / wilderness. Verizon was poor during the time I had it. I forgot what triggered switching from them but I didn't last long, had to switch to ATT. I switched to ATT because my Tesla uses them and I noticed it almost always had service in remote areas when I did not. Haven't needed to switch since.
ATT has a great plan for the Americas, south America is all covered, Canada is covered, and many other places. It worked really well for me in Brazil.
That said, when I start traveling to Europe and Asia more, I may switch back to Google Fi.
For domestic use, while traveling / on the road a lot? I would rate as follows:
ATT > Google Fi > T-Mobile > Verizon
Keep in mind, if you are mostly stationary it is better to use the carrier known for good service in your fixed location.
