Recently, there were few posts about data plan not working outside US. I am going to travel internationally for 3 weeks. I have flexible plan and is with google fi for 2+ years now. Do I have to tell support about my international trip or are there any steps I should take so I get coverage while traveling.
In Fi app, service outside US is set to true.

Like the title said. Activated 2 Unlimited Plan lines today in the USA (worked fine locally) and got on a plane to South America. Upon arrival, cannot connect to any network. Google FI support clarifies via chat this is intentional as I have not been an active customer in the USA for a long enough period to be entitled to the full product.

If anyone from the Google FI team reads this and wishes to remind me that this is entirely within your T&C I would recommend you make this clear to customers signing up. Perhaps you can say “Roaming in 200 countries - but not in the first 3 months”.

Support states per the FI policy it will not clarify how long the USA service needs to be active before global data is available - They literally told me to reach out to them prior to my next international trip the day before I leave to ask if their algorithm magically approved me for using their full product.

Edit: leaving this post up. tried to clarify to potential folks interested in signing up for this service to understand this unique product with global roaming to understand this will not be available to you for the first few months. Buyer beware. If you plan any travel within the first few months of signing up for Google Fi, reach out to their support prior to departure to ask if it will work when you arrive at your destination.

I switched to the flex plan, my cycle started, and I found out folks in my plan need to travel intentionally. I called Google Fi and they told me there is no way to switch back to international until June, and the only way to get international coverage before the trip is to cancel my Google Fi account and go with another provider. They stated there is no alternative. This seems absolutely bizarre to me, especially considering i was a loyal member since inception of project Fi.

Can people confirm that this is correct?

Was wondering will my iPhone still receive 2FA/calls or texts if I travel to Europe ? I plan on a long term trim away from the USA and don’t want to lose my cell number. Currently with T-Mobile. I guess I could stay with T-Mobile and turn data off on the iPhone and still be ok ? Not sure. Thanks.

Hello Everyone.

I am considering Google fi flexible and unlimited plus plan.

We have androids phone 5g unlocked but do not have esim capability.
I am hoping you can help, I am sorry if I do not search thoroughly.

I appreciate the help:

1-for the international travel, how does the plan perform in Japan and other east Asia countries?

2-For non esim phones, we need to order Sim card. How easy /process if we want to change phones in the future between regular sim and esim capable?

3-can we changed the plan monthly? (looks like we can, though any real life experience is appreciated)

Thank you and cheers.

Sorry in advance for the long post but I just want to give the full timeline of events in case the devil is in the details here. I also tried searching for this but all of the posts seem to be people saying that their data doesn't work for whatever reason, but my problem is with calls and texts. I've been on Fi for many years now around when it first came out and I had a compatible phone, probably about 6-7 years of continuous service now.

TIMELINE OF EVENTS:
I've been in Japan since Dec 12th and I'll be here for about a year on a work transfer. I already knew I was going to get kicked off Fi data so within the first 90 days I signed up for a local SIM. I wanted to keep my Fi number around for calls and texts though because it's connected to all my personal services back in America and I just want to keep the number for when I go back because its how many friends contact me.

Prior to my Fi data being turned off, I created a dual SIM setup. The way it's setup is:

Physical SIM -> Local docomo SIM that's basically just set to use mobile data preferred only
eSIM -> Fi eSIM that has call + text preference. All of the mobile data settings are toggled off.

Mobile data -> docomo SIM
Calls and texts -> Fi preferred

When the data roaming came to an end around mid March, I pretty much didn't notice anything since everything was setup fine. The only thing I was noticing was that the Fi network would drop in and out every 10-15 seconds, but I found a thread on here that said to change the preferred network type to 3G on the Fi SIM which would stop that and it did. I should also mention around when data roaming came to an end, I switched my plan from the unlimited plan to the flexible plan as I wouldn't be using data at all on it anymore so didn't want to pay for it for no reason.

Everything was working fine up until I went back to the States for a work trip on April 1st. I swapped back to my Fi SIM at that time and was in the states with it working fine for the 2 weeks that I was home. I came back to Japan about 5 days ago and did my old setup I had before I left and all was working fine again for about 2 days. 3 days ago however I noticed that on the Fi SIM I had no network connection at all. Calls and text still work over Wifi but if I turn it off I keep getting the "network unavailable" type errors. In my status bar I just have the empty bar with the ! on the right on the Fi SIM. My carrier status at the top reads "docomo - no service". Before it was saying "docomo - Google Fi"

I've basically tried every troubleshooting step I could on my own. I toggled airplane mode, restarted the phone, deleted and redownloaded the SIM, did the FIXME and FIROAM service codes, played around with every setting on the SIM setting page, turned off the docomo SIM and tried to re-setup Fi from scratch, played around with multiple combinations of the docomo + Fi sim settings, tried to manually connect to networks but they all failed.

I contacted support and I was chatting with them for an hour but that was a total nightmare. I'm not the type to lambast support since I know they're just doing their job and trying to help, but the agent was so clueless. She kept trying to say that my service was suspended because I was out of the country for too long but I kept having to say it wasn't for data, it was for calls and texts. In her copy+paste explanation at the end it even said "calls and texts are unaffected". On my Fi plan page I've reaffirmed calls and texts are unaffected so I'm pretty confident it's not due to being out of the country for too long but would be happy to have any other data points.

The only thing that seems strange to me is I have the option "roaming - connect to data services when roaming" available on the docomo sim but it's not on the Fi SIM settings page whereas I feel like it was there previously but I cannot confirm if it was.

I left off with the agent saying a specialist would contact me in 48-72 hours. I'd love to get some help before then though. If I can't get it working it's not a huge deal since it's still working over Wifi which should be fine for my purposes, but I'd still like to be able to get a text in a pinch if I need.

If anyone has any suggestions or has been here before please let me know! Thank you in advance

I recently travelled to Colombia and to Canada, and in both places, Fi appeared to have data available via roaming, but it was unusable. There wasn't one instance of successfully using it. I'm considering switching to another carrier after that and a particularly unsavory experience with customer support. Before I do so, any firsthand experience from other Google Fi folks? Has roaming worked for you? Was on the Unlimited Plus plan

I have the Unlimited Premium plan and spend most of my time out of country. I’ve been cut off from my international data so use eSIMs when traveling abroad and a local sim where I reside in the Caribbean.

Clearly have no use for unlimited data. Still need to be able to call internationally. Does anyone have experience with the Flexible plan working internationally? Would save me about $45 a month.

Thanks in advanced