Project Fi is expanding its coverage with addition of U.S. Cellular
Google announced the move on its Official Android Blog, and says the coverage will roll out in “the coming weeks.”
In the announcement, Project Fi Product Manager Evan Jacobs said that Fi users have a connection, “nearly 99% of the time, and spend about 95% of cellular time on LTE.”
U.S. Cellular provides national coverage according to its coverage map, but some of that is supplemented with King Street Wireless. Presumably this would extend to Fi users, as Google is trying to push Fi as a more reliable option for LTE service.
Why this matters: Project Fi is very much an experiment, but it’s one that Google clearly wants to see gain more traction. One way to do that is to improve the perception about any coverage concerns, given that it relies on the number three and four (T-Mobile and Sprint) U.S. carriers. U.S. Cellular is a nice add-on, but it will be a while for the benefits to kick in for those who may travel in areas where there isn’t a strong signal from the current range of partners.