The Struggle is Real: Cell Phone Data Plans and Internet Caps

As I sit here typing away on my laptop, I'm reminded of just how ridiculous cell phone data plans can be. It's like companies are trying to nickel and dime us every which way they can. Take T-Mobile, for example. They claim to offer unlimited data, but if you use too much of it, they throttle your speed to a crawl. At least they don't cut you off completely, but that's little consolation when you're trying to stream 4K videos or browse the internet without interruption.

And then there are the internet companies. Oh boy, do they love to boast about their high-speed plans, only to limit them with ridiculous data caps. It's like they're trying to make us feel like we're not worthy of true internet speed. "Wow, we can offer you 100 megabits per second!" yeah, but that means if you actually use it, you'll burn through your gigabyte cap in 2 minutes flat. That's just ridiculous.

I think many cell phone plans are just playing rip-offs at this point. They advertise all the bells and whistles – 4G LTE, 5G, the works – but when you try to actually use them, they're like, "Oh no, you're using too much data! You'll have to pay extra or we'll cut you off." It's like they're trying to squeeze every last penny out of us.

But what really gets my goat is when companies like Google start talking about offering unlimited plans. Ah, finally, some hope! Maybe they've found a way to bypass the limitations of the current data caps and offer true speed and flexibility to their customers. But then I remember that it's all probably just marketing speak. They're probably still bound by the same contracts with partner networks that restrict what they can charge and offer.

And don't even get me started on 5G. It sounds amazing – 10 GB to 100 GB speeds, low latency, less congestion... but will we ever actually be able to use it? I've read some articles that claim 5G is capable of incredible speeds, but I'm skeptical. Cable companies are going to stop at nothing to keep us from accessing true internet freedom. They're too invested in their monopolies and revenue streams.

That's why I think 5G will be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has the potential to revolutionize the way we live and work. Imagine having access to extremely high-speed internet anywhere you go – your car, TV, smartwatch... the possibilities are endless! But on the other hand, cable companies won't let us have that freedom without a fight.

I've seen some of the advertisements for new 5G plans, touting "blazing 10 GB cellular speeds" and claiming that these plans include a whopping 2 GB of data. Yeah, right. That's not exactly what I'd call unlimited data. And the price? A whopping $400 a month. That's just highway robbery.

To sum it all up (although I'm not sure why – this rant was just getting started!), Google F is definitely worth checking out if you're interested in cutting-edge tech. But even that may have its limitations. As for 5G, I'm cautiously optimistic. It has the potential to change everything, but we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.

What do you guys think? Do you use Google F or have an opinion on it? Are you excited about 5G? Let us know in the comments section below! And if you did enjoy this rant, be sure to give it a thumbs up. If you want more videos from me, I'll put some links right here. And don't forget to subscribe and hit that notification bell – YouTube won't show you my new videos otherwise.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthese days cell phone carriers get a really bad rep and not necessarily for the wrong reasons with controversies involving not so unlimited unlimited data plans ever increasing prices and ever decreasing data caps and on top of trying to figure out which company isn't going to rip you off you also have to need to consider which one will have the best coverage obviously luckily there are more options than ever and today we're going to go over one more that you might not know about Google that's right Google actually offers their own cell service called Google project fi which has some very unique features which may make it very attractive depending on a few things but it's certainly not for everyone so let's go over what Google fi is how it works and even if you already know what it is I'm going to discuss some things I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn first of all what is Project fi all about well what makes it unique is that it isn't so much a cell service in itself as it is a collection of cell services with project f it actually uses three partner cell companies plus Wi-Fi hotspots to choose the network with the best reception at any given time and automatically switches between them this obviously is unlike any other cell network where you're just connected to that one and these three networks at the moment are Sprint T-Mobile and US Cellular so at any given time whichever cell Network signal is strongest for your phone that's the one your phone will use but you aren't paying for all three of these since all of this is included as part of the Google project F cost as for the Wi-Fi hotspots it uses you may have seen my previous video telling you why you should never use open Wi-Fi hotspots so is this actually a bad thing well Google says that whenever it connects to a trusted hotspot it actually has a list of trusted ones it also creates an encrypted connection so it should be safe this is basically the same thing I talked about in my other video about vpns where where it encrypts everything before sending it through the Wi-Fi hotspot so you don't really have to worry I think they thought of the issues with the Open Wi-Fi hotspots and that's their solution as for pricing I'd say it's okay certainly not cheap and especially if you want more data the basic service costs $20 a month and that actually does get you quite a bit like unlimited domestic and international texting and unlimited domestic Talk Plus the main feature of course which is that signal coverage from all the parter networks but but the data is where it gets pretty pricey and it's not really any better than the other networks which is really a shame it's $10 a month for every gigabyte of data with a minimum of 1 Gigabyte I don't know what it is with these cell companies and their ridiculous data prices I mean come on Google I thought you'd be better but again it's not like any of the other networks are really going to be any better however the good news is that with project 5 they will actually refund you the cost of any data that you didn't use in the previous month month as a credit for the next so for example the past month I barely used any data since I was just trying it out so I got $743 cents back out of the $10 I paid for that gigabyte also if you go over your budget you get charged the same rate of about 1 cent per megabyte which is actually kind of weird it makes me wonder why they make you set a budget at all if they don't stop you from going over and charge you the same rate when you do and then give you back whatever you don't use why even have the option in the first place if makes no difference they could just very well just have a pay as you go Thing 1 cent per gigabyte to leave it at that I don't know anyway there is another thing you need to know which is that project 5 only works on certain devices you technically have to either have a Nexus 6 Nexus 6p Nexus 5x or a pixel phone in other words a phone made by Google there is a way to get around that though which I'm going to talk about in a second assuming you have one of these devices they will send you a special Google gole F SIM card and then you just pop that in activate it in your phone like any other and you're off but here's the question I wanted to know if it just uses a regular SIM card why can't I just use it in any other phone will it work and the answer actually turns out to be yes you won't see this anywhere on the project fi website but it is possible to use the project fi and its SIM card on unsupported phones with some caveats and limitations in fact I was able to get project F to work on my Samsung Galaxy S7 now before you go and do all this hold on because there are several things you need to know first of all you will first need to activate the SIM card on a supported Nexus or pixel device there doesn't seem to be any way around this so you will still need one of these supported devices or borrow one for a minute from a friend to get the SIM card working initially next know that many cell phones are network locked unless you specifically bought an unlocked phone for example my Galaxy cs7 was locked to AT&T since that's the carrier I got it from which means that only AT&T SIM cards would work with it when you put the Google 5 SIM card into the phone it will make you type in a special PIN to unlock it before it will allow you to use that SIM card however the good news is that most carriers allow you to request an unlock code that will let you use that phone on other networks as long as you're not in a contract or something like that so I filled out the form that AT&T had on their website and a couple days later they sent me the unlock code it worked so not a big deal now finally after you activate the SIM card and unlock your phone everything's good right well not exactly see if you use the project five SIM card in an unsupported device it will work technically but you only get to use T-Mobile service it won't be able to switch to the other partner networks so you don't really get the main feature of project 5 which is using the best one at the time still if you get good T-Mobile coverage where you are it may actually be cheaper than going through T-Mobile directly so it might still work depending on how much data you use and how those plans stack up against each other I would keep in mind though that obviously if you're going to use an unsupported device with project fi you're kind of on your own and I doubt that Google would be willing to help you if you have any issues when that would come up when using it cuz you're not really following their Direction so just be aware of that so is Google f a good option for self service well clearly I'm not going to be able to answer that for you it's something that you have to come up with yourself and it really depends me personally I think it's cool but I'm probably going to stick with my carrier because I'm grandfathered into the unlimited plan and even if it is a little bit more expensive my coverage is fine anyways I don't really have a reason to switch but if you don't have unlimited data and you have a Nexus or pixel phone this is something I would at least look into if you didn't know about it speaking generally though I just wish that these cell company would cut it out with these ridiculous data plan prices and data caps internet companies are doing the same thing where they boast all these high speed internet plans but you barely get a chance to use it because of the data caps sell companies especially though I mean 1 gab 2 gabt are you kidding me even T-Mobile who claims unlimited data throttles you if you use too much at least they don't cut you off I said it plenty of times before I think that many cell phone plans are just playing RI offs they advertise this woohoo 4G LTE you can get 100 megabits per second but we're not going to tell you that that means if you actually used that full speed you'd burn through your gigabyte data cap in literally 2 minutes 2 minutes this has got to stop hopefully Google might offer an unlimited plan for Google F in the future they haven't announced anything like that I'm just hoping it might be that they have a contract with these partner networks that restricts them on on what they can charge and what kind of planes they can offer I wouldn't be surprised you know you can't have that competition can we plus everyone's only going to be using more and more data as the years go on now with 4K streaming starting to take off hard drive space getting cheaper and all that cell companies are just going to cling to their data caps and squeeze customers for every drop and Penny now they're even starting to talk about so-called 5G which actually could be amazing if it can do half of what people are claiming some articles I've read say it's capable of 10 GB to 100 GB speeds I mean really insane stuff super low latency and less congestion at CES this year we heard a lot about 5G especially in the context of smart cars and self-driving cars which would potentially use this extra speed and bandwidth to network between each other in other cars to drive themselves if you think about it it would be awesome for basically any device in your home to have access to extremely highspeed internet we'd see a lot of innovation I think I mean your car your TV your Smartwatch whatever also with speeds that high it could potentially replace your home internet I mean imagine that you don't even need an internet line coming into your house you just have a wireless 5G hotspot receives all your internet and you're good but there's one problem with that there is no way in hell cable companies are going to allow that to happen many of these cable companies rely on local monopolies where you can only choose the one and you're screwed if you don't like it and if there was just some way to bypass them they'd be done for so this is what I think is going to happen yes we probably will get 5G in the sense that it'll be possible and yes it may even be capable of more than 10 gbit speeds but you're not going to be able to use it because the cell companies aren't interested in giving you unlimited data at extremely high speed s they're interested in making money hand over fist by giving you only a tiny little bit of data and charging you absorbent fees when you even try to go over it I can see the advertisements Now new 5G super speed with blazing 10 GB cellular 100 times faster than 4G and this new plan includes a whopping 2 GB of data that's enough to download 2 million text files just $400 a month by now so anyway anyway I guess that's enough ranting I know I kind of went off topic but sometimes I just can't help it I guess to sum this video up it might be worth checking out Google 5 it has some cool unique features but it's probably only worth it for a few certain people I just wanted to let you guys know about it if you didn't know about it already of course though I would like to know what you guys think either about project F or my little rant at the end do you use project 5 do you like it or not and what do you think about this upcoming 5G thing you can let us know down in the comments section below and if you did enjoy this video be sure to give it a thumbs up I'd appreciate it and if you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here you can click on these even if you're on a phone and if you want to subscribe I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday it should be worth it and consider clicking the Bell next to the Subscribe button for notifications since YouTube probably won't show you the new videos otherwise so I guess that's about it I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys and as usual I'll see you next time have a good onethese days cell phone carriers get a really bad rep and not necessarily for the wrong reasons with controversies involving not so unlimited unlimited data plans ever increasing prices and ever decreasing data caps and on top of trying to figure out which company isn't going to rip you off you also have to need to consider which one will have the best coverage obviously luckily there are more options than ever and today we're going to go over one more that you might not know about Google that's right Google actually offers their own cell service called Google project fi which has some very unique features which may make it very attractive depending on a few things but it's certainly not for everyone so let's go over what Google fi is how it works and even if you already know what it is I'm going to discuss some things I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn first of all what is Project fi all about well what makes it unique is that it isn't so much a cell service in itself as it is a collection of cell services with project f it actually uses three partner cell companies plus Wi-Fi hotspots to choose the network with the best reception at any given time and automatically switches between them this obviously is unlike any other cell network where you're just connected to that one and these three networks at the moment are Sprint T-Mobile and US Cellular so at any given time whichever cell Network signal is strongest for your phone that's the one your phone will use but you aren't paying for all three of these since all of this is included as part of the Google project F cost as for the Wi-Fi hotspots it uses you may have seen my previous video telling you why you should never use open Wi-Fi hotspots so is this actually a bad thing well Google says that whenever it connects to a trusted hotspot it actually has a list of trusted ones it also creates an encrypted connection so it should be safe this is basically the same thing I talked about in my other video about vpns where where it encrypts everything before sending it through the Wi-Fi hotspot so you don't really have to worry I think they thought of the issues with the Open Wi-Fi hotspots and that's their solution as for pricing I'd say it's okay certainly not cheap and especially if you want more data the basic service costs $20 a month and that actually does get you quite a bit like unlimited domestic and international texting and unlimited domestic Talk Plus the main feature of course which is that signal coverage from all the parter networks but but the data is where it gets pretty pricey and it's not really any better than the other networks which is really a shame it's $10 a month for every gigabyte of data with a minimum of 1 Gigabyte I don't know what it is with these cell companies and their ridiculous data prices I mean come on Google I thought you'd be better but again it's not like any of the other networks are really going to be any better however the good news is that with project 5 they will actually refund you the cost of any data that you didn't use in the previous month month as a credit for the next so for example the past month I barely used any data since I was just trying it out so I got $743 cents back out of the $10 I paid for that gigabyte also if you go over your budget you get charged the same rate of about 1 cent per megabyte which is actually kind of weird it makes me wonder why they make you set a budget at all if they don't stop you from going over and charge you the same rate when you do and then give you back whatever you don't use why even have the option in the first place if makes no difference they could just very well just have a pay as you go Thing 1 cent per gigabyte to leave it at that I don't know anyway there is another thing you need to know which is that project 5 only works on certain devices you technically have to either have a Nexus 6 Nexus 6p Nexus 5x or a pixel phone in other words a phone made by Google there is a way to get around that though which I'm going to talk about in a second assuming you have one of these devices they will send you a special Google gole F SIM card and then you just pop that in activate it in your phone like any other and you're off but here's the question I wanted to know if it just uses a regular SIM card why can't I just use it in any other phone will it work and the answer actually turns out to be yes you won't see this anywhere on the project fi website but it is possible to use the project fi and its SIM card on unsupported phones with some caveats and limitations in fact I was able to get project F to work on my Samsung Galaxy S7 now before you go and do all this hold on because there are several things you need to know first of all you will first need to activate the SIM card on a supported Nexus or pixel device there doesn't seem to be any way around this so you will still need one of these supported devices or borrow one for a minute from a friend to get the SIM card working initially next know that many cell phones are network locked unless you specifically bought an unlocked phone for example my Galaxy cs7 was locked to AT&T since that's the carrier I got it from which means that only AT&T SIM cards would work with it when you put the Google 5 SIM card into the phone it will make you type in a special PIN to unlock it before it will allow you to use that SIM card however the good news is that most carriers allow you to request an unlock code that will let you use that phone on other networks as long as you're not in a contract or something like that so I filled out the form that AT&T had on their website and a couple days later they sent me the unlock code it worked so not a big deal now finally after you activate the SIM card and unlock your phone everything's good right well not exactly see if you use the project five SIM card in an unsupported device it will work technically but you only get to use T-Mobile service it won't be able to switch to the other partner networks so you don't really get the main feature of project 5 which is using the best one at the time still if you get good T-Mobile coverage where you are it may actually be cheaper than going through T-Mobile directly so it might still work depending on how much data you use and how those plans stack up against each other I would keep in mind though that obviously if you're going to use an unsupported device with project fi you're kind of on your own and I doubt that Google would be willing to help you if you have any issues when that would come up when using it cuz you're not really following their Direction so just be aware of that so is Google f a good option for self service well clearly I'm not going to be able to answer that for you it's something that you have to come up with yourself and it really depends me personally I think it's cool but I'm probably going to stick with my carrier because I'm grandfathered into the unlimited plan and even if it is a little bit more expensive my coverage is fine anyways I don't really have a reason to switch but if you don't have unlimited data and you have a Nexus or pixel phone this is something I would at least look into if you didn't know about it speaking generally though I just wish that these cell company would cut it out with these ridiculous data plan prices and data caps internet companies are doing the same thing where they boast all these high speed internet plans but you barely get a chance to use it because of the data caps sell companies especially though I mean 1 gab 2 gabt are you kidding me even T-Mobile who claims unlimited data throttles you if you use too much at least they don't cut you off I said it plenty of times before I think that many cell phone plans are just playing RI offs they advertise this woohoo 4G LTE you can get 100 megabits per second but we're not going to tell you that that means if you actually used that full speed you'd burn through your gigabyte data cap in literally 2 minutes 2 minutes this has got to stop hopefully Google might offer an unlimited plan for Google F in the future they haven't announced anything like that I'm just hoping it might be that they have a contract with these partner networks that restricts them on on what they can charge and what kind of planes they can offer I wouldn't be surprised you know you can't have that competition can we plus everyone's only going to be using more and more data as the years go on now with 4K streaming starting to take off hard drive space getting cheaper and all that cell companies are just going to cling to their data caps and squeeze customers for every drop and Penny now they're even starting to talk about so-called 5G which actually could be amazing if it can do half of what people are claiming some articles I've read say it's capable of 10 GB to 100 GB speeds I mean really insane stuff super low latency and less congestion at CES this year we heard a lot about 5G especially in the context of smart cars and self-driving cars which would potentially use this extra speed and bandwidth to network between each other in other cars to drive themselves if you think about it it would be awesome for basically any device in your home to have access to extremely highspeed internet we'd see a lot of innovation I think I mean your car your TV your Smartwatch whatever also with speeds that high it could potentially replace your home internet I mean imagine that you don't even need an internet line coming into your house you just have a wireless 5G hotspot receives all your internet and you're good but there's one problem with that there is no way in hell cable companies are going to allow that to happen many of these cable companies rely on local monopolies where you can only choose the one and you're screwed if you don't like it and if there was just some way to bypass them they'd be done for so this is what I think is going to happen yes we probably will get 5G in the sense that it'll be possible and yes it may even be capable of more than 10 gbit speeds but you're not going to be able to use it because the cell companies aren't interested in giving you unlimited data at extremely high speed s they're interested in making money hand over fist by giving you only a tiny little bit of data and charging you absorbent fees when you even try to go over it I can see the advertisements Now new 5G super speed with blazing 10 GB cellular 100 times faster than 4G and this new plan includes a whopping 2 GB of data that's enough to download 2 million text files just $400 a month by now so anyway anyway I guess that's enough ranting I know I kind of went off topic but sometimes I just can't help it I guess to sum this video up it might be worth checking out Google 5 it has some cool unique features but it's probably only worth it for a few certain people I just wanted to let you guys know about it if you didn't know about it already of course though I would like to know what you guys think either about project F or my little rant at the end do you use project 5 do you like it or not and what do you think about this upcoming 5G thing you can let us know down in the comments section below and if you did enjoy this video be sure to give it a thumbs up I'd appreciate it and if you want to keep watching I'll put some other videos right here you can click on these even if you're on a phone and if you want to subscribe I make new videos every Tuesday Thursday Saturday it should be worth it and consider clicking the Bell next to the Subscribe button for notifications since YouTube probably won't show you the new videos otherwise so I guess that's about it I'm looking forward to hearing from you guys and as usual I'll see you next time have a good one\n"