Google’s Project Fi mobile network now open to all in US

Anyone in the United States can now sign up for Google’s Project Fi mobile network.

The fledgling MVNO, announced last summer, has been gradually rolling out across the country on an invite-only basis.

Now the web giant has dropped the requirement for an invite and is dangling the carrot of a cheap Nexus 5X to bring interested parties on board.

Those signing up for a Project Fi subscription can nab the pure Android Marshmallow phone for just $199 (around £140). That’s a discount of $150.

See also: How Google plans to change the mobile industry forever

The Project Fi proposition is an intriguing one. Rather than locking smartphone users into long contracts, subscribers pay a base fee of $20 a month, offering unlimited calls, messages along with cheap international calls.

The real kicker though is the data. It is charged on a pay-as-you-use basis. 1GB costs $10, 2GB costs $20 and so forth. Users are only charged for the data they use so will be refunded at the end of the billing cycle for data they haven’t used.

If users go over their allowance by 400MB, for example, they’ll be charged $4 on their next bill, so there’s no inflated rate for going over the purchased data.

As Project Fi is an MVNO, Google borrows the infrastructure of the Sprint and T-Mobile carriers in the United States.

Project Fi automatically hops between the two networks depending on the strength of the signal in their location.

Google has also promised automatic connection to thousands of Wi-Fi hotspots to help subscribers save on data costs.

In a blog post, Google wrote: “With Project Fi, we deliver fast wireless service with the flexibility to use it where you want (even internationally) and a monthly bill that’s simple and easy to understand.”

“Today, we’re excited to be exiting our invitation-only mode and opening up Project Fi so that people across the U.S. can now sign up for service without having to wait in-line for an invite.”