Update: Official details: How Google’s new ‘Project Fi’ wireless network will work
Owners of Google’s Nexus 6 flagship smartphone who are looking for a new carrier may have a fresh face to choose from today. According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, the Mountain View-based tech titan is planning to launch its new movie service plans today, with an emphasis on saving users money by only charging them for the data that they use.
The service will reportedly run on networks owned by T-Mobile and Sprint, and users’ handsets will switch between the two to find a stronger signal. In addition, the Nexus 6 will take advantage of Wi-Fi calling in order to reduce customers’ data usage. It’s not clear how the company’s rates will compare to the overall wireless market, however.
Sundar Pichai, the company’s senior vice president in charge of Chrome, Android and Google Apps, said that Google isn’t interested in disrupting the overall wireless industry with the new service when the company first announced it earlier this year. If the company wanted to set the wireless industry on fire, this strategy is certainly a slow way of going about it. The Nexus 6 is far from the most popular Android handset on the market, which means that the company has a small number of potential customers to choose from.
The deal is good news for both T-Mobile and Sprint, too: the two companies were in talks to merge, but stepped away from the table after it became clear that U.S. regulators would fight a deal that brought the third- and fourth-largest carriers in the country under one roof. The carriers didn’t take the decision to offer the service lightly: the decision to work with Google reportedly went all the way up to Masatoshi Son, Sprint’s chairman.
According to the Journal, Google agreed to volume limits that would allow the parties to renegotiate their deal if the service became too large as part of the agreement.
