Completely through with Verizon now after 20 years because they screwed up my phone while switching plans last night, and I find out this morning that I can’t use my phone for calls or text now.
Has to be just a small technical error I’m sure, so I’ll just call them using *611 since my phone says it will still work for emergency calls.
Riiiiight…
Long story short, it seems Verizon just shuts down for nights and weekends and the only ones home are the robots and AI employees.
It’s not like cell phone service is important to our lives and our jobs or anything.
FF to this morning when I came across the ability to try Google Fi free for 7 days.
Two birds, meet one stone.
I was able to install it without too much trouble as I have both a physical and eSIM.
Long story short again. Phone works fine, but texting is not allowed if you have a VPN/Firewall on your phone. (Netguard)
To be clear. Not whether you’ve given complete access through the VPN for Google Fi.
It’s the fact that you have one active at all!
Had a tech call me (and it’s not lost on me that I could get an actual human on the phone ), but they verified my fears that Google Fi does not allow you to have an active VPN on your phone.
Trial done!
VPN and Firewall are two different things, does it work if you disable the Firewall? Fi comes with a VPN service you can use and many people use other VPN’s with Fi.
I’m not really sure where your experience is coming from. People use VPNs with Google Fi every day. Many of them are using adblocking VPNs but Google Fi itself also offers a VPN with the service itself.
Google even offers a VPN service of their own that works on Fi. I personally use WiteGuard to tunnel back to my home network when I don’t trust public WiFi or want to bypass simple web filters.
If you’re coming to Fi for better support, god help you. Fi support is legendary for being some of the worst out there. Case in point, it’s complete horse shit that texting does not work when connected to a VPN. I’m connected to the CloudFlare VPN for 40-50 hours a week on my work guest wifi and I send and receive texts all day.
Google Fi service is great, but their support is terrible. And it really sounds like your phone is misconfigured somewhere if you can’t text. Fi uses mobile “internet” data for RCS, but I think SMS messaging is still just using carrier connection and not internet. For example, I can turn off my mobile data and wifi completely, which disconnects from my ExpressVPN and internet, and still send SMS (not as the RCS/“chat” messaging).
A firewall app sounds kind of different from VPN, but should not interfere with SMS either, unless you’ve blocked carrier data. I think you might just have a setting misconfigured somewhere in your phone. You might want to try backing up your stuff and reset your phone and try again?
I’ve used AdGuard with Google Fi for years and never had issues. It creates a local VPN to use as a filter, which is what I imagine you’re talking about.
Been with Fi over 4 yrs. Used VPN Unlimited from day 1, toggle back and forth between it while on wifi and Fi vpn when away from home never had an issue related to either one.
I appreciate all the comments about VPN working for them, but I’m not sure they completely understand my issue.
I use Netguard, which uses the single VPN slot on an Android phone, but it’s not an actual VPN in the traditional sense as it does NOT hide who or where you are, it just acts as a firewall to prevent apps from reaching the internet without permission.
So after reading the comments here, I don’t doubt that there are tons of people who have successfully used a VPN with Google Fi (even though the tech told me it wouldn’t work), but I would like to find anyone that could verify they have it working with Netguard specifically.
Thanks again for the help and comments!
I now know the tech was wrong, but I still need to find out why it’s not working with Netguard.
Just an update that I just deactivated Google-Fi, turned off the eSIM slot it was occupying, then restarted, reactivated, etc…It works!
I never did change any settings with Netguard or any network settings on my phone. I had spent hours trying to figure out how to back up my saved WiFi passwords without root, but when I couldn’t figure that out, it prevented me from doing the network reset I was planning to try.
Anyway, whatever it was is now sorted out. Time to look at that Pixel 8 Pro!Thanks everyone!
Also, Netguard isn’t a true VPN, just a Firewall. It uses the Android VPN service to block data use for apps & services. However, Android can only have one service running at a time. So you either allow the Google Fi VPN (real VPN tunnel w/ encryption) or Netguard.
I was Gung ho to get away from Verizon and use Googe Fi, which is why I took the time to verify it by calling a tech, but she didn’t beat around the bush in saying that “VPNs are not allowed on Google Fi”. And while it’s been my experience has been that techs quite often get it wrong, she had a confidence about her statement that made me believe.
This is also the reason I posted here in the hopes that someone could definitively speak on it one way or another. If there is a way to get this working with Netguard, I’d jump right back. I was even thinking of moving to the Pixel 8 pro with the Black Friday deal, and the $500-$700 back when signing up for Google Fi for 24 months, but control of my device is not for sale.
Hopefully someone could confirm this here.
Edit: Just to be clear that I’m not using Netguard to obfuscate my IP, but rather as a firewall to prevent apps from contacting the internet in the background without my permission, and that I allowed Google Fi full unfettered access through this firewall.
I assume you mean Wireguard and if so, that’s a true VPN which Netguard is not. It just uses the VPN slot to act as a firewall to prevent apps from connecting to the internet without permission. I don’t believe that Wireguard has this ability.
I can’t imagine any of these big carriers have good support anymore, but at least I was able to get a human on a Saturday. That accounts for something.
But yeah, it’s a worthless service if I can’t text. I will not relinquish control of my device just so I can text.
This sounds the same to me, so I can’t explain why mine’s not working.
As u/heythere46 pointed out below, texts “shouldn’t” be routed through the internet at all anyway, and Netguard does not filter cellular. But there is WiFi calling, so I’m not convinced they don’t try and route SMS through the internet using their app, if it happens to be cheaper for them in some way.
I set Google Fi as un-managed in Netguard, so it doesn’t even apply an allow rule, it just acts like it doesn’t exist.
I’ve also monitored the Netguard log in real time to see what might be blocking access, but unless it’s piggybacking on Gboard, or the game optimizing service, it’s not going through Netguard at all.
), but they verified my fears that Google Fi does not allow you to have an active VPN on your phone.