Google's Project Fi has long offered a "pay for what you use" plan, with pricing set at $10 per gigabyte of data. Today Google is changing things up, though, with a sort of unlimited plan for heavier data users.
Project Fi is launching a new feature called Bill Protection. With it, a customer won't pay more than $60 for data in a single month, even if they use more than 6GB.
The data level and max data cost will change depending on how many people you've got on your Fi plan. For example, if you've got two people, your data level will be 10GB and your max data cost will be $100. If you've got five people on your plan, your data level will be 16GB and your max data cost will be $160 dollars.
If you use more than 15GB of data in a single month — which Google says less than 1 percent of Fi customers do — then your speeds will be slowed to 256kbps until the next billing cycle. Customers can get high-speed data again after 15GB of usage if they'd like, though, by paying $10 per gigabyte of usage.
With Bill Protection, you'll only pay for unlimited data in the months that you need it. So if you only use 1.4GB of data one month, you'll pay $14 for the data rather than $60.
Also of note is that Bill Protection applies to other Project Fi features. That includes international high-speed data and data-only SIMs in devices like laptops or tablets.
Bill Protection is launching today to Project Fi subscribers. If you're already on Fi, you'll see it during your next billing cycle.
Project Fi's Bill Protection appears to be trying to offer the best of Fi and traditional carrier unlimited plans. With it, you can only pay for the data that you use during light usage months, but you also won't end up with a huge bill during the months that you do consume a lot of data. Project Fi's throttling threshold is a bit lower than the major four U.S. carriers', but the upside is that you don't have to pay full price for unlimited data every month on Fi if you don't use much data.
What do you think of Project Fi's Bill Protection?
