Google Fi to drop US Cellular, still provide roaming.

[Vicpdx17]

It has been announced by Google Fi support staff that US Cellular will no longer be included as a network switch network but will now become a Roaming only partner.

You will not be charged for roaming on US Cellular but you cannot freely switch to it unless you have no T-Mobile coverage. Google Fi is now to be considered a T-Mobile only MVNO with roaming agreements.

[aenews]

It has been announced by Google Fi support staff that US Cellular will no longer be included as a network switch network but will now become a Roaming only partner.

You will not be charged for roaming on US Cellular but you cannot freely switch to it unless you have no T-Mobile coverage. Google Fi is now to be considered a T-Mobile only MVNO with roaming agreements.

Saw that news. It's a bit unfortunate. Used to be that you'd get 3 carriers (T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular). After the T-Mobile/Sprint merger, it became two carriers (albeit this wasn't a reduction of service, just a loss of Fi advantage versus standard T-Mobile postpaid plans).

Now with US Cellular dropped, Fi is essentially offering equivalent service to T-Mobile Postpaid. That said, we still get roaming on US Cellular and have the advantage of higher network priority compared to T-Mobile MVNO's. In addition, the unlimited group plan ($20/Line for 4-6 Lines) is better value than T-Mobile postpaid. Still get unlimited data, no MVNO de-prioritization, and the standard Canada/Mexico data coverage.

[dmarkson]

I suspect that it was costing Google too much. Being on the USCC profile with AT&T 5g roaming worked better than the T-Mobile profile, and a lot of people outside USCC coverage probably figured that out.

There have been a lot of threads on Reddit about this but someone keeps flagging them and they dissapear within a day.

I would not be surprised that this is the thing that allows Google to start selling iPhones (since iPhones do not have network switching). Or time to Google to get out of business and sell it off. I suspect the latter but we shall see.

The phone discounts are still pretty darn good, have to admit that! Other than that all the Fi advantages are getting whittled away.