When I left the USA, I decided to keep my US phone number as so many things are tied to it. After a few months in Australia, it suddenly stopped connecting to the network.

Now, typical debugging for this is relatively straight forward:

• Restart
• Double check APN settings
• Disable other SIMs (and restart, everything involves a restart)
• Switch between physical and eSIM
• Removing the account completely and going through full setup
• Reinstalling the Fi app
• Disable an re-enable international coverage
• Using dialer codes

Unfortunately, none of that worked. It would attempt to connect and then, zero bars.

So, I called Fi support. First, step through APN settings, because that’s where all troubleshooting starts. Pointed out I was a few steps ahead and customer service brought up a new one for me: switching the cellular Data Speed.

1. Settings -> Mobile -> The Fi plan -> Voice & Data: Switch to 4G
2. Settings -> Mobile -> Mobile Network: Turn off Automatic.
3. Wait until available networks appear, which might take two minutes. Try every network.

Select the network and, yippee, it’s connected. Maintains the connection when turning back to Automatic too.