SAN FRANCISCO — Google is trying to shake up the wireless phone industry with a low-priced service designed to pressure major carriers into making it more affordable for people to get online and use Google’s services.
The service, Project Fi, debuted Wednesday, about two months after Google revealed its plans to expand its ever-growing empire into providing wireless connections for smartphones.
Google is selling the basic phone service for $20 a month and will charge customers only for the amount of cellular data that they use each month, instead of a flat rate. Each gigabyte of data will cost $10 a month. That means a customer could sign up for a plan offering three gigabytes of data and get $20 back if only one gigabyte was used in a month.
Project Fi initially will only be sold to a narrow audience that owns the Nexus 6, a smartphone that Motorola Mobility made with Google’s help.
Google’s pricing setup makes Project Fi less expensive than most of the comparable plans
