T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57606784-94/t-mobile-to-offer-free-unlimited-international-data-texts/

by gabbo • 13 years ago

384 172 13 years ago

news.cnet.com

wandermatt• 13 years ago

List of countries here: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp

leeoniya• 13 years ago

oops, someone forgot an 'ORDER BY country ASC', or more likely to hit the Sort A->Z key in Excel.

::rageface::

codemac• 13 years ago

  % cat /tmp/tmobile_countries | sort | pbcopy
  
  Aland Islands
  Anguilla
  Antigua and Barbuda
  Argentina
  Armenia
  Aruba
  Australia
  Austria
  Bahrain
  Barbados
  Belgium
  Bermuda
  Bolivia
  Bonaire
  Brazil
  British Virgin Islands
  Bulgaria
  Cambodia
  Canada
  Cayman Islands
  Chile
  China
  Christmas Island
  Colombia
  Costa Rica
  Curacao
  Cyprus
  Czech Republic
  Denmark
  Dominica
  Dominican Republic
  Easter Island
  Ecuador
  Egypt
  El Salvador
  Estonia
  Faeroe Islands
  Finland
  France
  French Guiana
  Germany
  Ghana
  Greece
  Grenadav Nicaragua
  Guadeloupe
  Guatemala
  Guyana
  Hong Kong
  Hungary
  Iceland
  India
  Indonesia
  Iraq
  Ireland
  Israel
  Italy
  Jamaica
  Japan
  Kenya
  Kuwait
  Latvia
  Lithuania
  Luxembourg
  Malaysia
  Malta
  Martinique
  Mexico
  Moldova
  Montserrat
  Netherlands
  Netherlands Antilles
  New Zealand
  Norway
  Pakistan
  Panama
  Peru
  Philippines
  Poland
  Portugal
  Qatar
  Romania
  Russia
  Saudi Arabia
  Singapore
  Sint Maarten
  Slovakia
  South Africa
  South Korea
  Spain
  Sri Lanka
  St. Barthelemy
  St. Kitts and Nevis
  St. Lucia
  St. Martin
  St. Vincent & the Grenadines
  Suriname
  Svalbard
  Sweden
  Switzerland
  Taiwan
  Thailand
  Trinidad and Tobago
  Turkey
  Turkmenistan
  Turks and Caicos Islands
  Ukraine
  United Arab Emirates
  United Kingdom
  Uruguay
  Uzbekistan
  Vatican City
  Venezuela
  Vietnam
  Zambia

aray• 13 years ago

Has anyone made a coverage map yet? That would be useful (going to be limited by radio coverage/standards/countries/etc)

zonkey• 13 years ago

http://opensignal.com Don't know how accurate it can be.

nknighthb3• 13 years ago

It has no useful relationship to reality. It relies on a self-selecting group of people to download and run their app to collect data, and then presents that data in what I'm sure is a precise but utterly inaccurate form.

If you believe it, there is no signal from any carrier at either my current home in Washington, nor my previous home in Santa Clara. And there is certainly no T-Mobile, AT&T, or other GSM carrier signal to be found anywhere near my current home (my AT&T iPhone stubbornly insists on working regardless).

r00fus2• 13 years ago

Hell yes. It would cost TMO very little to provide this to me, as I travel very infrequently. But I consider it to be a very nice perk indeed.

jordanthoms• 13 years ago

This is _awesome_!

jsnk• 13 years ago

Does anyone know if 30 dollar prepaid plan (100 minutes. Unlimited data and text) included in this deal?

gabbo• 13 years ago

Doesn't seem like it:

New and existing T-Mobile customers who are on a post-paid plan are eligible for the new international plan, which kicks off on October 31

brownbat3• 13 years ago

I'm not even sure you're going to be able to find that plan anymore. [EDIT: dangrossman's right, they still have this plan on the "prepaid" side, but you have to dig a bit. If you're a brand new customer to T-Mobile, you're not exactly going to stumble on it from the main page.] The website really looks like they're bumping everyone up to the $50+ plans, which is sad, because they owned the value data plan territory for a while.

Case in point, I'm currently paying them $25/mo for 1.5 GB of high speed data. No contract, BYOD. I originally thought I needed "unlimited" data, but found that if I just avoid videos until I'm around wifi (which I'm around way more often than I thought I would be), then I never touch the limit.

So how's the $50 per month for 500 MB high speed plus unlimited everything else compare?

Ting offers 500 MB for under $20 / mo, and you can even pay-as-you-go to save money, or cover overages at a reasonable rate. For $50 per month, Cricket gives you 2.5GB of 4G speeds per month, falling back to unlimited 3G speeds, 5GB for $60 or 10GB for $70. Neither are BYOD, though, which can be a deal killer.

T-Mobile had great pricing, but now they're just normalizing with the larger players like Sprint and AT&T, drifting away from the bargains offered by the mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), probably pulling the whole market upwards.

quink• 13 years ago

Just in case anyone hasn't noticed this:

While the data is free, it won't be particularly fast. Customers can expect network speeds at around the same level that they get in the US after they are throttled. Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert said the average speed customers would get would be around 128 kilobits a second.

Think of it more of an extension of the Kindle 3G business model rather than anything else. The maximum one could theoretically suck through that straw, at 24/7, is 40 GB a month.

nwh• 13 years ago

Better than the $2/MB we pay for international data in Australia.

_delirium• 13 years ago

That still sounds pretty reasonable, considering that at normal roaming-data prices, that 40 GB would cost you about $10,000. Between a speed cap and insane prices, I'll take the speed cap!

mikeash3• 13 years ago

128kbps is pretty slow, but it's fine for basic use. That's basically a mediocre EDGE connection like the original iPhone without great coverage, and while it was no speed demon, it was certainly usable. It'll let you send instant messages, and check your e-mail and get directions if you're patient. I could easily see surviving on a plan like this while traveling.

freehunter3• 13 years ago

I would be willing to pay for this service here in the US for a reasonable price. There are plenty of things I would love a low-end data plan for, but can't justify the cost of $45/mo for prepaid data at 1.5GB/mo like Net10 offers. Think of electronics projects that could benefit from an anywhere, always on connection even if it's super slow. But is that project worth $45/mo, and is it worth it if you run out of data before the end of the month?

staunch• 13 years ago

They have an unlimited plan for $30 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148698

nknighthb3• 13 years ago

For me, that's not the painful part. The painful part is the six week limit.

When I was in Taiwan, I was handed a prepaid dumbphone and a 4G wireless hotspot with iffy battery life and some indoor coverage issues.

Being able to send/receive SMSs and brief phone calls with my smartphone's home number, and keep up on email and light browsing on my own phone without being at the mercy of the hotspot, would have been very nice, but I was there for ~9 months split into two trips during the course of a year.

I would gladly pay an extra $10-20/month (with $0.20/minute voice) for such capability over an extended period, but that wasn't, and apparently still is not, an option.

car• 13 years ago

If you get one of the Blackberry UMA models or a T-Mobile branded phone with 'Wifi calling', those phones will work over Wifi anywhere in the world, at no extra cost.

In other words, you can make and receive voice calls on your regular number, and the same for SMS via WLAN.

HaloZero• 13 years ago

I think that the case T-Mobile is going for is not the person who lives in another country for long periods of time for work but the traveller who has to constantly go back and forth between areas, or just a frequent vacationer.

I imagine it's just better for you to get your own plan if you're spending 3/4 of the year there.

trimbo2• 13 years ago

Noted it is 2G only, but it is a great step forward.

unsignedint2• 13 years ago

It'll certainly be huge step forward -- I sometimes go to Japan, and it's hard to find pay phones these days, and they make me jump through a lot of hoops getting prepaid phone there, if that's even possible as a foreigner...

andrewpi2• 13 years ago

I used b-mobile in Japan for a pre-paid data-only SIM earlier this year. They will even mail the SIM to the airport so it is waiting for you when you arrive.

craftkiller• 13 years ago

T-Mobile has realized exactly what a carrier is supposed to be and ironically named it "Uncarrier". No more subsidizing phones, no more contracts, just a pipe. We will move data between your phone and the world for a flat fee and that is the end of the story. I switched to T-Mobile about a month ago because I agree with their business practices and want to support their growth.

xster3• 13 years ago

Carriers outside North America are what carriers are supposed to be.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

I just switched in April after hating life with AT&T and deciding to put my money where my mouth was.

In cities - their coverage is VERY good. Countryside & cross country road trips are where they fall off the map, but I've been very happy paying $80 for unlimited call/text/data + No B.S.

T-Mobile is way behind in terms of users & they know it - which means they're making strong plays against the competition. Makes me want to bet on them for no other reason than to force the other carriers to step up their game.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

Your report matches my impression of their coverage. I head out of the city just often enough to go with a carrier that has better coverage. I've thought about getting some cheap plan on a better carrier for those occasions, but it's not quite worth the trouble. They're so close!

antimatter• 13 years ago

I switched to T-Mobile last month after Apple released the 5s. This has also been my experience.

rhizome• 13 years ago

Now reflect on this old news:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile_...

lelandbatey• 13 years ago

Ive had tmobile for the past 4 years, across 4 different smart phones.I can honestly say that i don't have any bad experiences with them. I find their network fast and reliable, and I don't live in a big city. I'm amazed they aren't more populatlr given how cheap and reliable ive found them to be.

cbr3• 13 years ago

$80? Pre-paid that's $45.

xster3• 13 years ago

T-Mobile sounds great on paper but it's like selling sports cars for 1000$ and you don't know you just bought a Lada until you take it for a spin.

I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San Francisco for half a year and speed is around 0.05Mbps in about 30% of the city. And they're not uninhabited spots of town either.

pauljforyt2• 13 years ago

I have the same experience on a daily basis. I get no service to a maximum of 1 bar standing next to a window at home and the same sitting at my desk at work (which happens to be next to a nice, big window). Couple that with dead zones on the commute to work, and I spend almost 100% of my day with little to no service. And no, I do not live in the middle of nowhere; I live a tad bit north of Chicago. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all have fantastic service here. I'm trying to get out of my legacy contract with T-Mobile over this, but they want to charge me $300 to terminate.

T-Mobile can throw in as many features as they want, but if I can't reliably make a call from home or work, then it's useless to me.

jquery• 13 years ago

I can only speak for San Francisco, but that sounds like an issue with your phone, not t-mobile. Make sure your phone supports LTE and HSPA+ on the right spectrums. My experience with T-mobile in SF has been nothing short of superb, on an unlocked iPhone 5. Super-fast low-latency everywhere I go.

shitlord2• 13 years ago

As much as I love T Mobile's policies, I hate their coverage. I get 0 bars inside non-wood buildings, but when I step outside, I get a few bars. I live in a somewhat hilly area, so I get spotty reception in certain parts of town. I really wish they would spend more money trying to improve their coverage instead of telling everyone how they are so different. Because even if they are different, if they have poor coverage, they won't get a lot of customers.

undergroundhero• 13 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, where are you located? I get good T-Mobile reception inside all types of buildings in and around the Kansas City metro. The only place I've ever lost coverage is in the basement floors of my doctor's office away from windows.

Their rural coverage is pretty awful though.

potatolicious2• 13 years ago

I switched with the iPhone 5S. Off-contract too.

I rarely leave the city, so the lack of coverage in rural areas doesn't bother me. In NYC I have to say I've noticed a small improvement in reception over AT&T - buildings where I've been dead in the water before now have some connectivity.

So far so good, this new announcement is just icing on the cake, especially as a Canadian expat. It used to be that when visiting home I'd inevitably wind up with one helluva phone bill, and that's just with extremely minimal texting and calling just to herd cats.

aditya3• 13 years ago

Awesome. How's the HSPA/LTE network in the city? Can you do a quick speedtest and post results?

yeukhon• 13 years ago

I left T-Mobile when at&t was offering better plan. The only thing I wish all carriers will do is eliminate minute deduction for calling your friend who isn't in your network.

Do they already have that for daytime? I think for most carriers out there, if not, all, night time is minute free.

sameer_sundresh• 13 years ago

T-Mobile's plans are all unlimited talk and text now. The only difference is the amount of high-speed data (after which you still get EDGE data access).

diggum• 13 years ago

I was a T-Mobile customer for years, and liked my experience very much. The only reason I am not a customer right now is because I had been traveling to China quite a bit and needed a provider that I could access over there.

As soon as this contract is over or work is no longer paying, I am switching back.

kamjam2• 13 years ago

Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional

This has actually been the norm in UK for quite some years. Look on t-mobile.co.uk for example, they have a SIM Only plans. As an example:

The Full Monty (SIM Only), £26/month on 12 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data
iPhone 5c 16GB, £42/month on 24 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data, £30 for phone

So the same plan, the iPhone effectively costs you £414. That't not actually a bad price, esp if you consider it as finance. But not everyone wants a new phone, e.g. maybe your iPhone 5 is still "good" and you want to wait for the iPhone 6 to come out in a year...

mrinterweb• 13 years ago

I've used T-Mobile for about 10 years total. I've also used Sprint for two years. I live in the city so my reception is pretty much identical to every other mobile service as long as I'm in the city. When I leave the city, T-Mobile is not as good as my friends who have Verizon, but then again they are frequently paying close to twice what I pay. I figure that if I can get good service 99% of the time while living in a city and deal with lesser service that 1% of the time I'm not in the city, that is a compromise that I'm glad to pay much less for.

starrhorne• 13 years ago

I switched a few months ago and it's been great. I was afraid I was going to have to switch away, since we're going to be out of the country a lot next year. I'm super happy to be able to stick with them now.

chrsstrm2• 13 years ago

This is great. I had an incident in Belize this year where I turned off airplane mode to connect to wifi on the boat I was on and my cellular radio auto-connected to Belize's local mobile carrier without me realizing (I had international roaming enabled on my account). My phone started syncing and updating apps in the background and within 2 minutes of passive usage I had amassed $270 in data charges. Only. 2. Minutes. I plead my case when I got back to the states and they removed the charges without a thought (although I had to send in a written appeal). International data rates are ridiculous and it's nice to see a carrier acting rationally.

djim• 13 years ago

exact same thing happened to me in belize to the tune of $1500. i checked with AT&T before my trip and they assured me that belize was covered per my international plan, but then backtracked and told me they specifically said it wasn't covered when i disputed the bill. i clearly remember the call as i was deciding between buying a local sim and just using at&t's roaming plan. lesson learned: always get a local sim. it's cheaper.

mjn• 13 years ago

To avoid this (common) issue, EU regulations now mandate a roaming-fee cutoff at €50 until the account-holder positively indicates their knowledge and acceptance of additional roaming fees. They can also pre-authorize a higher cutoff if they really do expect to be incurring more than €50 in roaming fees and don't want to be cut off, but this must be an explicit opt-in (not the default terms of a data plan). The result is that your losses in the case of unexpected data syncing are at least limited by default. But only within the EU, of course.

chrsstrm2• 13 years ago

That was a big portion of the basis of my appeal; a carrier shouldn't allow charges to be compounded that high and that fast. There were alert SMS messages stating my data charges balance, but the $50, $100, and $200 alerts all arrived at the exact same time, literally all had the same timestamp. If I had been capped at $50 and then prompted in order to continue, I would have paid the fee and learned my lesson.

fatjokes• 13 years ago

Okay, I was about to quit T-Mo this winter for Verizon, but I'll stick around a little longer. Points for effort. It's desperately needed to compensate for the shitty coverage.

vpeters25• 13 years ago

They got this website were you can report coverage issues: http://www.t-mobile-takeaction.com

I reported I had barely a signal inside my house, a couple weeks later I had 5 bars.

iNeal3• 13 years ago

That is really cool!

aestra• 13 years ago

Reported signal issues many times. Nothing done, said use Wifi calling. Had to drop T-Mobile.

ShinyObject• 13 years ago

This is very interesting. 128kbit is fast enough for Google Maps which is good enough for me.

I know they said the free overseas data is only for contract customers but I wonder if they will allow us pre-paid people to add on the "packs" they mention before going on a trip.

aaronbrethorst5• 13 years ago

And this is why competition and effective government regulation[1] are fantastic things. If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/

eurleif• 13 years ago

If T-Mobile wasn't in a distant fourth place in the US market, or if they'd been acquired by AT&T we wouldn't be seeing this, nor would we see Verizon and AT&T introduce their own versions of T-Mobile's JUMP program.

I'm not an economist, and I haven't looked into the details of the cell phone market in depth, but here's a possible alternative opinion. I'm not asserting that this is the case; just wondering if it might be.

Would T-Mobile be able to treat customers as well if they were more popular, or are they only in this position because their ratio of customers to cell towers, spectrum, and other capital is lower? And if the latter is true, isn't that an inefficient use of resources, which market forces (i.e. the merger) would have corrected if not for government intervention?

aaronbrethorst5• 13 years ago

Ostensibly, VZW and AT&T enjoy certain economies of scale above and beyond T-Mobile given their significantly greater customer bases. T-Mobile has a perception of shitty service, which means they have to spend a metric shit-ton of money buying spectrum and building out their LTE network.

Take a look at T-Mobile's their most recent 10-Q filing. Their EPS is actually negative: http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1283699/00012836991...

trimbo2• 13 years ago

It also didn't hurt that AT&T paid T-Mobile $3 billion in a breakup fee. They're spending it wisely, at least.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/t-mobile-takes-3-bill...

r00fus2• 13 years ago

Sounds like that failed takeover bid was the 2nd best thing that AT&T did for US mobile customers in recent history (the iPhone deal with their Cingular subsidiary being the most impactful).

adventured• 13 years ago

Would kind of like to see Softbank merge up Sprint and T-Mobile US (if it could be purchased), to give them even greater scale to put serious competitive pressure on AT&T / VZ. Softbank is good at attacking entrenched markets, the more market leverage they have the better.

aaronbrethorst5• 13 years ago

That could be a short term challenge since Sprint is all CDMA and T-Mo is all GSM. Wouldn't have any short term benefits, but the long term could be big.

praxeologist3• 13 years ago

If the gov't didn't have its hand in this space for so long, there would be no massive AT&T and there would be way more innovation. You're cheering someone for applying a cast when they also broke the leg.

masklinn3• 13 years ago

If the gov't didn't have its hand in this space for so long, there would be no massive AT&T

I didn't expect to see revisionism in here, let alone of such magnitude.

Without government intervention, there would be no AT&T, nor would there be alternate carriers. There would only be Ma Bell.

And don't bullshitting about Ma Bell's regulated monopoly, the regulation was put in place because Bell was already a monopoly by the time 1934 rolled around.

skrause• 13 years ago

This is not really a prime example of good competition. The only reason T-Mobile can do this is because they are basically getting a massive subsidization from the German mother company, the German Telecom, who is behaving in its German home market just like AT&T behaves in the USA. As soon as T-Mobile gains any significant market share it will be just like the others.

scalenemuscles• 13 years ago

So how exactly does getting subsidized by a mother company to offer a compelling package not equal good competition?

narenl• 13 years ago

The U.S consumer benefits regardless. if the German taxpayer or German customer of a monopoly subsidizes the U.S consumer that is a German market issue.

Your second point has some merit though: that once they gain significant market share in the U.S, T-mobile can become anti-customer. But T-mobile's prepaid plans and now this international texting gambit might force other carriers to follow suit before T-mobile gets to that significant market share. At that point T-mobile cannot afford to become anti-customer because other carriers would have started matching T-mobile's pro-customer offers in the meantime.

raverbashing• 13 years ago

I think you mean Deutsche Telekom (yes, I agree with it behaving like AT&T)

At least their competitors "get" more things better than them, so for the most part they're not even an option.

lobster_johnson• 13 years ago

I wonder if they have added more roaming agreements to their network. Last time I was in Norway, there was no coverage at all -- no network, no calls, never mind Internet access -- which I found strange. Usually you will be able to connect to via local network and pay for roaming charges. Norway is all GSM, same frequency band, and my plan has International calling, but I still had to swap out the SIM card for my Norwegian one. Could be a fluke, of course. Edit: Or it may be that pay-as-you-go doesn't provide international roaming.

I love T-Mobile's approach, and the whole reason I use them is because they are the underdog who's doing things a little differently.

hencq• 13 years ago

It does provide international roaming. At least in the Netherlands I have no problem using my pay-as-you-go plan. However, I had exactly your experience in China: I could only make emergency calls.

firloop• 13 years ago

I was in Norway as well and I did not get any reception on my T-Mobile phone until I contacted the account holder on our family plan (they were still in the US) and had them add international roaming to our post-paid plan. Immediately afterwards my phone was able to connect to a network, so I think roaming with T-Mobile is opt-in.

rallison• 13 years ago

I have been quite pleased to see T-Mobile continuing to provide AT&T and Verizon with some competition. I sampled T-Mobile for a couple of months with their $30 unlimited data/text plan and was pleasantly surprised with the performance in the LA area - on a Nexus 4 (without LTE), speeds were generally better than on AT&T. The only reason I finally went back to AT&T was for rural coverage, as I do enough traveling that this was an issue. Were it not for that, I would have gladly stayed with T-Mobile.

grecy• 13 years ago

I continue to be dumbfounded that intelligent people would call this "free". The degree to which marketing has invaded our everyday lives is astonishing.

It's not free, you're paying a monthly fee for it.

SeoxyS• 13 years ago

This is huge. I recently spent ~$200 on AT&T's $30/120MB bundles on a two-week trip to Europe. I thought I was getting a good deal, too. It's fantastic to see the market shifting slightly in favor of the customers.

brendanf2• 13 years ago

You can get unlimited data plans in Europe for 10-40 euro per month.

klausjensen• 13 years ago

That work in all of Europe? Or in individual markets?

X-Istence• 13 years ago

last time I was in Europe I got a sim from T-Mobile, pre-paid, loaded up with 25 EUR, and had 3 GB of data to use. Which is great because my grandparents on my dads side don't believe in getting internet access! Tethering my phone got me through without withdrawal symptoms ;-)

bobbles• 13 years ago

Does this mean that as an Australian.. If i somehow managed to get a T-Mobile SIM and account I could use this for international travel? (Not expected to use it as the main sim in Australia though)

qzervaas• 13 years ago

Engadget says you must be in the US for 6 weeks of a 3 month period to use this

dmnd• 13 years ago

I wish they announced this before the iPhone 5s launch - I just signed a new 2-year contract with AT&T.

iNeal3• 13 years ago

You can probably still return it.

badclient• 13 years ago

My brother manages our family account with AT&T with 7 lines. I casually read the title of this post. His response? "We're switching."

collypops• 13 years ago

The pebble that starts an avalanche of long-overdue awesomeness for consumers

jonny_eh• 13 years ago

I wonder if this'll be available with their ridiculously amazing $30 per month pre-paid plan.

https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/b8c4a2164434

andrewpi2• 13 years ago

No, the $30 plan is a pre-paid plan. This new offering is only on the post-paid plans.

dude32• 13 years ago

I switched to t-mobile from Verizon. I have actually been really happy with the service. My plan is unlimited data 5 gigs of 4g data/unlimited 3g and 100 minutes of talk time for $30 a month. Every extra minute is .10 over the 100 minutes. So my plan ends up being $50 a month. But compare that to any other carrier and its a much better price. Also, I like that it's a German company and didn't sell out like Verizon giving 1,000,000+ members phone numbers to the NSA.

dude32• 13 years ago

Also I can use the SIM in international phones in the US. I have a french phone.

liquidcool• 13 years ago

I did a bunch of traveling earlier this year and getting local SIM card is pretty easy and cheap (~$20/mo), and has the advantage of allowing local calls. In Bangkok and Kyiv you can get them at any 7-11 or electronics store. Philippines and Prague it was a visit to a carrier. The rough patch was Tokyo, but you can rent a mobile hotspot for a reasonable amount and have it delivered to the airport.

If you're only there for a few days, free roaming is very nice to have, but if you're there a week or more I think it's worth the small effort to get the local SIM. That also allows me to keep Straight Talk prepaid in the US with my own phone. YMMV, but this was the most economical, flexible route for me.

hydralist• 13 years ago

i pay 30$ for unlimited data and 100 min. damn good if u ask me, although a lot of dead zones (aka Edge only) in SF

hussong• 13 years ago

I wish the German T-Mobile mothership were as customer-friendly as the US operation.

nomercy400• 13 years ago

Really nice idea, and a good step forward. I was wondering, if this truly is an 'international' package deal, does this also mean it will be available 'internationally' at the start, instead of just the US?

jasonkester• 13 years ago

Good to hear. US carriers do a terrible job of dealing with anything international. It's as though they're honestly surprised that anybody would ever want to leave the USA or make a phone call to anybody in another country.

An example: I flew to the 'states this weekend. Once on the ground, I topped up my American (T-Mobile) sim with a month's worth of credit. (There was no way to do this from abroad since their sims don't work there at all, and their website has a ridiculous country redirect even from your account page).

At the airport, on the way home, I sent a text to my wife letting her know I was on the way. It failed.

I tried again to various permutations of the French number, with absolutely no success. Googling around, it seems that you can't do that with t-mobile. You can't even get them to turn it on, since their "international" packages only work with their contract services. Not just roaming, but even placing a phone call to another country is impossible with pre-paid t-mobile. Sure enough, landing in Paris, the phone was dead dead dead. No "welcome to France" message. No extortionate international roaming charges. Just no ability to make calls at all.

I had to pop my UK sim back in just to be able to use the phone again.

I'm looking forward to the first company (in any country) that truly gets all this. They'll get my business, as well as pretty much all the business from anybody who travels at all.

corin_3• 13 years ago

Vodafone (UK) are awesome within Europe - when I am abroad I pay £2.50/day to use my normal price plan abroad (so I still get unlimited minutes/texts, and 6GB data, for no cost other than that daily fee). For calling European numbers they aren't quite as good, but for £5/month the prices drop from £1/min to between 5p and 20p/min depending on the type of number I'm calling.

Outside Europe they're still awful though, something like £1.50/min to call to America/Asia from UK, and same for both placing and receiving calls when in those continents.

Last time I was in America I picked up a cheap phone at a supermarket that gave me 1c/min phonecalls to anywhere in the US or even abroad - including calling UK mobile phones. That saved me a lot of money.

rs• 13 years ago

Think the trick to overseas is to get a local pre-paid SIM card, and use that number locally. As pre-paid SIM cards are getting more pervasive around the world, normally this works out as the cheapest option. Naturally, there are some countries where purchasing a pre-paid SIM is near impossible, or costly enough that sticking to roaming with your current provider works out cheaper.

batuhanicoz• 13 years ago

Vodafone Turkey is also really good. I can use my plan in any country that either have Vodafone or a company they have an agreement with.

And also I can call everyone from Europe with my plans as well. Unlimited land-line calls to nearly every country.

bnastic• 13 years ago

Three got a little bit better - no roaming charges whatsoever in a number of European countries (i.e. no data cap on my plan). It was really handy to not have to worry about loading google maps and local websites while out and about in Italy this summer. Hopefully the list of countries will keep increasing.

deskpro• 13 years ago

Check out EE roaming; it's competitive with Vodafone (one of the reasons I moved to them). £5/month for unlimited roaming minutes/texts in EU, US and others. Data is reasonable value @ £25/GB and lasts a month. Importantly includes places like the US, Australia, Russia, China, India etc ....

mason55• 13 years ago

Good to hear. US carriers do a terrible job of dealing with anything international. It's as though they're honestly surprised that anybody would ever want to leave the USA or make a phone call to anybody in another country.

Your case is a little different but in general it's a huge stream of free revenue for the carriers. Very few people pick their plan based on international roaming. People don't roam internationally very often. Those that do are likely on a business plan and much less sensitive to price. No one has any idea what it costs so they can use very opaque pricing schemes.

As the article says, AT&T and VZW are making 90% margin on their international business which you'd think would make it ripe for competition. But since almost no one purchases their plans based on the international roaming fees there hasn't been much going on.

NemesorZandrak• 13 years ago

This will be amazing in Europe. From jan In Eu all carriers have to drop roaming charges and people now are traveling exponentially more than they used to 10-15 years ago. This is big. I know everyone focuses on USA and china bit old continent still has potential ;)

adrinavarro• 13 years ago

Huh?

Roaminng charges are hardly going anywhere. And that would be in July 1st… And countries have opposed the measure.

tomp• 13 years ago

It would be nice if someone would modify the title to clarify that this is the US T-Mobile (not the UK or CRO or any other).

nathana• 13 years ago

The most interesting part about this to me is the $0.20/min voice price. Not because it would have a direct impact on me or anything like that, but mostly because it seems like in the US, carriers are falling over themselves to offer "unlimited voice" while restricting the data. This is the exact opposite.

aCCelerate• 13 years ago

Ah, all this roaming here there everywhere discussion reminds me of one of my fundamental wishes for a new startup to tackle: create a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) which essentially just roams everywhere (including the home country) but always picks the strongest signal of all available wireless carriers.

I hate to be in an area and not have coverage. I carry another prepaid sim card around just for that case but obviously that's a different number then. I'll be happy to pay a premium if that was available.

And then maybe one day we can also get rid of the sim cards and just do it in software... I don't get why we still have sim cards.

rdl• 13 years ago

I'm on a month long trip to Asia right now (today: Sendai), and remembering why I used to keep a tmobile blackberry and BES just for travel. Flat rate $80/mo unlimited edge to the BES (which I used for email and then tunneling IP from my laptop) was worth it even when I only used it one or two months a year; absolutely worth it when I was overseas full time. Sadly I let it lapse and am now playing the "find a local LTE dongle" game, which in Japan is a JPY 1260/day old Huawei LTE android device on SoftBank which is the 5th phone and 8th computing device I'm lugging around on trains and such.

Seriously going to look at MVNO options when I get back; running a pro privacy, pro customer MVNO, ideally based in a country with strong privacy laws, and handsets transparently configured to be safe for customers (even when the local carrier is turning over data..) would be pretty fun.

kin• 13 years ago

This is great. Sometimes I travel out of the US and am pretty much phoneless unless I purchase a temp sim card or something.

T-Mobile is doing pretty disrupting things in the mobile service market and I hope it pays off for them.

matthewmcg• 13 years ago

This is a logical offer for them to make. Many of their customers will have unlocked phones, so they aren't in a position to force those customers to use overpriced international data plans (e.g. AT&T's $120 for 800MB/mo). The competition is the cheap nano-SIM card in the airport vending machine.

EveretteTaylor• 13 years ago

Just another marketing ploy by T-Mobile, their service and coverage isn't even close to their competitors. I see this as more of sign that things are crumbling.

T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

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