Three months with Google Fi

Earlier this year, I discovered a cool hack with Google Fi. Once you order your first voice SIM, you can then order as many data SIMs as you want for no extra cost against your data pool. That means all the Mifi's I have stacked up around the house can be dropped in my bag, left in the car, or attached to a Raspberry Pi so I can get back into a network later.

Want $20 off joining Fi? Use this link and we both get a $20 credit.

After nearly a decade with T-Mobile, I decided to port over and give this plan a shot. There were a few problems though:

• On T-Mobile, there is unlimited data for selected streaming services. This pushed me toward Fi's 6GB/mo data cap.
• When on certain flights, I could no longer get free unlimited Gogo Wifi

For the first problem, I ended up going with their "unlimited" plan to cap my costs. As I would find out later, unlimited is really just 26GB. For the second, if you know someone that has T-Mobile, you can just use their phone number in for an hour of free Wifi in-flight. If they have Magenta Plus, then you are set the whole flight.

A few days ago, my phone was pick pocketed while I was out of town at Mardi Gras. I contacted Google Fi and learned that they don't support the eSIMs that come with iPhone 11 and later, but I could just head to Bestbuy and get a Fi SIM for $10 and they'd credit me.

Now the problem was, I'm out of town, there's no fast internet except for the Mifi I brought with a data SIM in it, and I need to restore from iCloud. 26GB goes fast in that case, and after the data is all used up it is 2G - 128kb/sec, unless I want to cough up $10/Gig. It also happens to be the start of the month, so now I'm coughing up exactly that.