Project Fi now supports tablets and Internet-only devices, won't charge monthly device fee, lets you add up to nine data-only devices to your plan
David Ruddock / Android Police :
Context & Ripple Effects
When Google launched its MVNO in April 2015, Project Fi was a phone-only service: one supported handset (the Nexus 6), $20/month plus $10/GB, riding Sprint and T-Mobile networks. This update widens that narrow base — tablets and Internet-only devices can now join an existing Fi plan, up to nine per account, and crucially without a monthly per-device fee.
First-order effects
- Fi subscribers can attach up to nine data-only devices to their existing plan, paying nothing per device and only for the data those devices actually consume under the $10/GB model.
- Google makes a Fi account the billing hub for a household's connectivity rather than a single-phone contract, at zero incremental fixed cost to the subscriber.
Second-order effects
- The no-fee structure pressures carriers and rival MVNOs whose tablet data offerings typically carry per-line monthly charges — pricing pressure falls squarely on the per-device fee line item.
- A larger installed base of data-only lines gives Google more leverage over its host networks (Sprint, T-Mobile) as wholesale traffic volumes grow ahead of the 2016 group plan that pushed the family-bundling direction further.
Third-order effects
- This is an early step in Fi's evolution from a Nexus-owner experiment into a general connectivity platform — a path that ran through the $60 data-bill cap, the Google Fi rebrand with iPhone support, and eventually a conventional unlimited tier — pointing toward carriers competing on plan architecture and device breadth rather than network ownership alone.
- If per-device fees erode across the industry, the value in mobile plans shifts from line count to pooled data management, favoring operators with software-driven billing like Google's.
The trend: MVNOs are expanding single-phone plans into multi-device, household-wide connectivity platforms, with Google Fi's device and plan expansions marking the clearest example.