browsing the cellular cereal aisle

I still don’t have cellular service. Well, I do. But I don’t. Not really. It’s a complicated dance involving the black hole of connectivity that is the neighborhood where I live and work and the mystery of my phone’s sudden decline, set to the beat of a changing cellular marketplace, and the result—at least currently—is a bit of a fiasco.

I blogged recently about how I’d made an unfortunate assumption about my phone being unlocked, and that cut me off from the world—through my phone at least—for nearly a week. Then, I discovered I’d made another big misstep in expecting that my new provider would offer WiFi calling, because I was silly and assumed that every carrier offered this. It didn’t even occur to me to check. Guess what? Cricket Wireless does not offer WiFi calling.

Given that my home (and home office) is smack in the middle of a known dead zone for pretty much every provider other than Verizon, WiFi calling is mandatory. The result is that I do actually have phone service now, but I have to travel several miles away (no joke) for a signal and even then it’s unreliable. Inside that radius, I have no service. Nothing. Not even for an emergency.

There’s an even longer, more complicated, and less interesting backstory to all of this. The short version is that I’ve spent quite a lot of time not only working with Apple to figure out precisely what is going wrong with my iPhone 5s—which was behaving fine until I updated to iOS 9 in October—but also surveying and digging into the wide variety of cellular plans available to customers today.

Mike often complains about getting stuck in the cereal aisle at the grocery store. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the vast number of choices, even when you consider that nearly all of them fall into one of a small number of categories. There are a dozen or more different versions of every oat cluster, rice square, or bran flake you could imagine. With all of the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) coming onto the market, shopping for cellular service today feels much like trying to find the right box of granola.

It’s very good to have options, but it increases the likelihood both of finding the right solution for me and of getting stuck with yet another bad fit.

To cut through the non-contenders, I’ve made a (mental) list of deal-breakers—including, obviously, WiFi calling. Budget is another major consideration, as is my preference for remaining on a GSM network and not having to purchase a new handset. Of course, with the iPhone 5s’s performance in question, that last factor is becoming less important. (The 5s saga is an epic all its own.)

After doing I-don’t-even-want-to-think-about-how-many hours of research and communicating with various reps, I’m rather close to signing up with Google’s Project Fi.

As I understand it, Project Fi revolves around a combination of WiFi calling and cellular connection through both Sprint and T-Mobile networks. That alone appeals to me, and its pricing structure is also attractive. Republic Wireless offers an almost identical model, but from what I’ve read they are partnered only with Sprint, their limited handsets are decidedly low-end*, and I hadn’t heard of Republic Wireless before a couple of days ago, whereas I’ve known and worked with Google for years.

(*This is an issue only because I don’t want to have to carry multiple devices—like the addition of a stand-alone digital camera—for work.)

I’ve seen quite positive reviews online, even from someone in Portland and someone coming from an iOS environment to a first-ever Android device, as I would be. The main complaints I’ve come across are more about the Nexus 6, which was Project Fi’s initially exclusive handset, than about the service itself. The service has recently expanded to include the Nexus 6P and the Nexus 5x. The Nexus 5x is still considerably larger than my iPhone 5s, but isn’t ridiculous in size.

I did reach out to Google to ask about when they might add even more supported phones to Project Fi, and I was surprised to receive a message back within the hour. Of course, they told me they will be expanding but can’t share details, etc. I was simply pleased by the fast and friendly tech support, which is something else I’d read about.

For the time being, I’m about a week and a half into my first (and only) month of service with Cricket Wireless. Though I’m somewhat tempted to switch back to T-Mobile, so that I’d at least have WiFi connectivity on my phone in my home and office, that seems like a ridiculous and potentially expensive half-measure that wouldn’t improve my situation all that much. I’ve given myself a deadline of mid-January for settling on a new service; this takes the pressure off of me to make a decision RIGHT NOW, especially so close on the heels of having made a bad choice, and it sets an endpoint (I hope) for this dearth of connectivity.

I know, First World Problems at all that, but I’ve felt incredibly vulnerable knowing that I can’t call for help if something goes wrong. For someone living with chronic illness, this is a very real concern. Also, I can’t send text messages to Mike asking when he might be home from work or what his preference might be for dinner. Then there’s the whole issue of not being able to contact newspaper interview sources outside of email with any regularity. Forget trying to make an appointment at the vet’s office or for car service. I’m also cut off from family and friends sharing holiday photos and thoughts, and the experience has been more isolating than I would have imagined.

I’m still looking for first-person anecdotal experiences of Project Fi from people I know and trust. It seems I may be a bit too far ahead of the curve for my own good, as the people I’ve spoken to thus far haven’t even heard of Project Fi. But one person, a friend we saw at a Winter Classic brunch today and someone who is generally savvy about business, urged me strongly to go ahead and sign up.

I probably will. I’m just a bit gun shy at the moment.

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Creative Commons photo: Spotify by Johan Larsson.

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