# T-mobile's new free roaming plans



## brad (May 22, 2009)

T-mobile in the US has decided to drop all international roaming charges in its phone plans: you get unlimited text and data, and phone calls to any country are 20 cents/minute, for a flat rate of US$50/month. See http://www.t-mobile.com/simple-choice-international-plans.html. That rate applies anywhere in the world: you travel to Europe or Asia and it's all the same. Calling anywhere in the world is 20 cents, so you can call home from Europe or Asia for that rate. And still have unlimited text and data.

This looks cheaper than the best plans of most Canadian mobile providers, especially given the unlimited data. For someone who doesn't make a lot of phone calls, this could be interesting. You could roam fulltime in Canada and still pay less than you'd pay for a comparable plan from a Canadian provider. The downside of course is that you'd have a US phone number, so if people want to call you it would be a long-distance call from anywhere in Canada.

In the past I've been able to get US cell phone plans despite having a Canadian address; I can't find anything on their site saying that you need to have a US address in order to have a T-Mobile plan, although getting a clear answer would probably require calling them to find out. I'm not sure how they'd handle sales taxes if you were based in Canada.

One catch is that the "unlimited data" is on a relatively slow connection, good for email and web browsing but not streaming video.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

It's interesting. There's usually such a catch in fine print to "unlimited" though.

The roaming thing is pretty annoying for travel. Europe is regulating it away. I wouldn't mind paying reasonable roaming fees for the convenience of using 1 sim card, and the companies would make a lot more from me. I think the "roaming" charges were designed for old networks and they just enjoy catching the random travelers now. It's not like the networks can't handle tourists. Many countries have billboard ads on the borders and in airports for sim cards now...

I currently pay €20/month for unlimited data and any additional country usually costs me €20 or so for a month pre-paid. A local number is required to get free wifi in some countries (even in McDonald's etc) but it's annoying to always change sim cards. There are dual sim card phones now... If only there was 1 PAYG sim card that would bill me local rates per MB from any foreign telco..... and 1 sim card for home.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

My solution for now is to boycott data plans until they become reasonably priced. I use my antique smartphone as a dumb phone with a voice plan; on the occasions where I feel like I need data I use wifi. I just can't justify spending more than I do now ($25/month) on a cellphone plan.


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

I use speakout, free non-smart phone with $100 card purchase, card expires in 365 days (which it seems may change for every plan that expires since there was a recent decision that I believe Telus? cards were ruled purchased and could not expire), I digress. I purchased a $100 card in mid April and I have around $50 still on it.

My husband on the other hand pays $80/m for his phone and iPad with 8 GB data each and unlimted after 5 pm calls anywhere in north america. Daytime minutes aren't that great but he doesn't use his phone weekdays much anyway.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Speakout looks great, but it doesn't look like you can use them outside Canada, right? I suppose you could just buy a different SIM card when you travel. My problem is that I travel to the US a lot, and Europe every other year, so I need something that I can use in other countries without too much fuss -- and it's easiest if I have just one phone number instead of a different number in every country. So far I've been using Fido and using my accumulated FidoDollars to buy travel packs when I'm in the US or overseas, which basically gives me about an hour of free calls.


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

Yes, it's not a good plan if you go to the US often. We have US phones with AT&T that we use with a prepaid card when we're at disney. Other than that we don't need our phones in the US, but if we did I wouldn't stick with Speakout.


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## Andrew (May 22, 2009)

That "unlimited" T-Mobile roaming offer is for 2G speeds only.. They do charge a monthly fee if you want faster 3G speeds. Still a decent offer if you want to send email or browse the web at a slower pace


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