This is doing the same things as Republic Wireless. Calls and texts over wifi to keep their carrier costs down. RW is cheaper at $10 a month without data and $25 for unlimited 3G.
With RW you need their customized android phone but they are cheap. $650 for the phone is steep (or a credit pull).
Agreed, currently with Republic Wireless, same model (kind of wondering if they had talks with RW at all). I have the unlimited 3G for $25 total and it has served me well thus far. Happy with the service and saved quite a bit after moving away from Verizon.
$650 is a steep buy in for the phone, but I expect they will on board cheaper phones as this takes off. RW is still more cost effective over all at this point, although the data service will probably be better with Fi's two networks (RW runs on the sprint network when not around wifi)
Do keep in mind they actively are against tethering, which stinks if your in a pinch and need internet for a laptop or w/e. Also afaik the phone you get from them can't really be used anywhere else. Other Sprint MVNO like ting won't accept RW phone. Maybe Spring themselves will but I'm currently in the process of moving and have a dud for a phone now.
Sell it on ebay to another RW person. I sold my two old ones when I moved to the Moto G and got some money for them. I was surprised because the Moto G is totally worth it and I would not have recommended those old models to anyone.
True except if it's really just 3G that's not enough for some people who like to stream video and audio - ideal bitrates probably can handle it, but not realistically.
That said, anyone streaming Netflix on their LTE connection is going to want unlimited data to start with, so neither is a good bet.
RW's current pricing is $5 for wifi-only, $10 for cellular with no data, $25 for 3G data, and $40 for 4G data. Both data plans include throttling after 5GB. But the new pricing model they'll start testing in May is basically the same as what Google's promising, and they announced on Monday upcoming beta testing for basically everything else that Google Fi will include.
Yeah, I like Republic, they've got a 'refund your unused data' feature in beta, too, and it should make their service cheaper than this offering, though I don't know if they offer an automatic Wifi VPN tunnel.
They've announced that they're adding another carrier, which is almost certainly going to be T-Mobile, who is providing the international service that Google's going to offer. Once RW has made it official that they'll be offering the Nexus 6 and T-Mobile backend, they'll probably add the same international service as Google, if they haven't confirmed an outright merger by then.
With RW you need their customized android phone but they are cheap. $650 for the phone is steep (or a credit pull).