What you need to know
- Google Fi has dropped U.S. Cellular as one of its two support networks.
- This change now leaves T-Mobile as Google Fi’s only officially supported network.
- Subscribers will still be able to utilize the U.S. Cellular network when roaming with no additional charge for doing so.
Google Fi has dropped one of its two supported carriers for subscribers, but it isn’t a cause for alarm.
The recent change to Google Fi’s supported cellular networks was essentially stumbled upon by a subscriber’s conversation with customer support shown on Reddit (via 9to5Google). The Redditor was attempting to connect to the U.S. Cellular network, but their phone wouldn’t even try to establish one stating there was “no subscription.” After a short conversation with support, they were told that “U.S. Cellular is no longer an official network for Google Fi.”
This was later confirmed by 9to5, making T-Mobile is now the only officially supported network on Google Fi, particularly since Sprint merged with T-Mobile.
Those who have relied on the U.S. Cellular network connection shouldn’t worry about this too much. Google Fi’s customer support informed the subscriber that U.S. Cellular can still be connected through its Extended Network (roaming). A lone bright spot with this change is that users won’t be charged for using the U.S. Cellular network during roaming times.
However, it does seem as though even if both networks are working perfectly fine, users will still be tossed over to the T-Mobile network since that is now the only supported service.
While Google has yet to properly draw attention to the sudden drop, the subscriber was assured by the service’s customer representative that we should expect an official update from Google soon.
