One Step Forward, Three Steps Back (Premium)

As I wrote last Friday in Fi, eSIM, CDMX, and Me (Premium), I’ve hit a familiar wall, as I often find myself in a decision paralysis when no clear choice emerges. But I’ve evaluated more options since then. And I’m getting ready to make a change. Some change. Any change.

Here’s my current situation. I’m using Google Fi, which has cost me an average of $71 per month over five months because we’ve been traveling so much this year, mostly to Mexico. But even those months when I didn’t travel were fairly expensive at an average of over $50. And I want to spend less money on my wireless bill.

I like Fi because of its transparent, usage-based pricing and because I can use it normally when traveling internationally. But because I’ve been using an iPhone for most of 2022, I can’t take advantage of some of its best Android features, like networking switching, call and text spam protection, visual voicemail (in the iPhone’s Phone app), and 5G compatibility. And I’ve had other Fi-related issues, like connectivity problems when reconnecting after a flight.

My situation, like everyone’s, is unique. But if I were to break down this particular decision matrix, what I’m looking for, in no particular order, is:

• Lower prices
• Call and text spam protection
• Seamless international usage
• No connectivity issues
• Full iPhone compatibility
• No contract: I want to switch when I want to switch

And I’ve spent a lot of time researching how I might solve this problem. Too much, maybe: as noted above, I have this sense of paralysis now where nothing makes sense.

Let me give you one example of a dead-end that’s come up since I wrote that first article. A reader recommended a service called U.S. Mobile, which can cost as little as $20 and is completely compatible with the iPhone, solving two of my issues. But I ran into two other problems while researching it: while you can purchase international data for rates that are often reasonable (for example, $18 for 10 GB of data in France), the prices in Mexico, where I will be traveling the most, are not at all reasonable ($50 for 5 GB of data). Well, I was talking about getting a cheaper Mexico-based eSIM/SIM, so perhaps I could get by that. But when I researched spam protection, I found this: “We don’t yet offer the ability to block unwanted callers at a network level.” One of their recommendations, which matches my own experience, is to “buy a phone from Samsung or Google that automatically identified spam callers.” Ah well. I’m on iPhone right now.

There’s more.

I could stick with Google Fi but switch from the pay-as-you-go Flexible plan I’m currently using ($20 per month for unlimited talk/text, plus $10 per GB for data) to the Simply Unlimited plan. This costs $50 per month and provides unlimited talk, text, and data (including in Canada and Mexico), though data is technically limited to 35 GB per month, a plateau I’d never hit. My unlimited hotspot capabilities would drop to 5 GB per month, which is acceptable, but I would lose access to my data-only SIMs, which is another neat Fi feature, and one I’d miss. But what’s really odd about this plan is that the broad international capabilities of Fi disappear too: “international calls, texts, and data outside the US, Canada, and Mexico aren’t available.” Huh.

So I could switch from Google’s Fi Flexible plan to Simply Unlimited. It wouldn’t go into effect until early October, but that’s good timing as I’m heading to Mexico in mid-October. And Fi lets you switch plans at any time, so I could later move up to the Unlimited Plus plan ($65 per month) on the fly if I need other international usage. (Or back to Flexible, I guess.)

Doing so would keep my bill down a bit, especially in those months in which I travel to Mexico. But it’s still $50 per month, and it doesn’t solve the issues I have with call and text spam protection, the connectivity issues, or the other iPhone-related problems I encounter. And it introduces a few other issues, like full international coverage and the lack of data SIMs, which I do use sometimes.

Sigh.

I’ve considered just switching back to Mint Mobile and saving a lot of money: I can get a 4 GB plan for $15 per month during the 3-month trial period and keep it at that rate if I pay for a year at a time. But, as I’ve experienced, Mint offers no international data usage, so I’d need another solution for that. And it offers no call and text spam protection at all. One might argue that dealing with spam might be worth the $25 per month I’d save (Mint at $15 vs. Fi at $50), but I do at least get some basic spam protection using Fi with an iPhone. On Mint, it was open season. What price my sanity?

I’ve also considering switching to a major U.S. carrier, too, of course.

T-Mobile fully supports the iPhone, offers spam protection, and has small discounts for those who are 55 years old or more. But their unlimited plans cost $50 and $65 per month for those with just one line, so I’m right back at that same pricing threshold. The $50 plan, Magenta 55+, includes spam protection, 5G, 5 GB of 4G/LTE hotspot, 5 GB of 4G data in Mexico, and free international texting. If it were $40 or less, I’d probably have switched already, as there’s no annual contract. Put simply, T-Mobile appears to offer everything I want, except truly lower prices.

But it’s close. And maybe that $50 price threshold is OK if I get everything I want, something that is not the case with Google Fi’s Simply Unlimited plan.

I’m going to try it.