
T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts - gabbo
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57606784-94/t-mobile-to-offer-free-unlimited-international-data-texts/
======
aaronbrethorst
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/](http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/19/att-tmobile-merger-dead/)

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

~~~
gcb0
think of this as microsoft and sony taking a hit for every console they sell.
It's anti-competitive because other console manufacturers can't do that.

in the end, you end up with a result like in politics. Whoever has more money
wins the whole market.

The market pretty much exchanged short term benefits (cheaper console, better
phone plans) for worse longer term problems (lame games because you have no
choice, more expensive phone plans because you have no choice)

~~~
irishcoffee
Ah, it was always my understanding that Microsoft and Sony did take a hit
selling their console, and made the money back in things like controllers and
games. Do they make a profit on the console itself now?

------
mikeash
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!

~~~
joelrunyon
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.

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

~~~
moosehawk
Even less if you don't talk much:

[http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans](http://prepaid-
phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans) ($30/m for 5GB of 4G, unlimited text, 100
minutes)

~~~
mortenjorck
That's a rather amazing deal if you do most of your talking on VOIP, but I'm
left wondering what this disclaimer means:

 _This plan is only available for devices purchased from Wal-Mart or devices
activated on T-Mobile.com_

It seems to imply device restrictions.

~~~
skystorm
It means you need to activate your SIM card for this particular rate at
Walmart or on their website -- T-Mobile stores and phone support can't do it.

Several of my friends have done just that, get a stand-alone SIM card and then
activate it on T-Mobile's website.

~~~
dasil003
Wow I've been overpaying by going into a store. I use T-Mobile pay as you go
whenever I come to the States (twice a year for 2-week stints usually).

Do you know if I buy a SIM card and activate it for that deal will I be able
to let it lapse and then re-up it when I come back in 6 months? Or will I have
to buy a new SIM card every time?

~~~
thaumasiotes
I was on that plan and let it expire. My account page still displays the plan,
while noting that it's unfunded and I can't use it, so it seems that you can
let it lapse and re-up. I've been curious whether that will still be true come
the new year.

~~~
dasil003
I have been living in London since 2011, so I let me old T-Mobile plan lapse.
When I came back my SIM was dead, so I bought a pay-as-you-go SIM in the
store. They told me if I don't top it up every 3 months it is not guaranteed
to work. However after I am typically gone for six month cycles, and the last
2 times it was still active.

I'm very keen on trying this new plan though as $3/day on top of pay as you go
is not a good value on a 2 week trip. I'd be very happy to just pay $30 and
get a reasonable amount of mins/texts along with great data.

------
quink
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.

~~~
nknighthb
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.

~~~
HaloZero
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.

~~~
nknighthb
Getting my own plan was a legal impossibility, and would have done little to
help anyone in the US get hold of me.

car's suggestion is at least an interesting half-solution. I didn't even
consider a T-Mobile "wi-fi calling" phone at the time, as I'd been under the
impression, right up until today, that T-Mobile had only had that feature for
a couple years before abandoning it.

------
craftkiller
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.

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

------
jasonkester
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_
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
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.

~~~
corin_
Agreed, that's essentially what I was doing in the US, I just got it with a
cheap phone too so I could keep my normal blackberry up and running with my UK
number.

But stuff like the Vodafone deal within Europe are awesome, as it saves the
hassle of needing either two phones or sim swapping.

~~~
Spearchucker
I do the same. Cheap phone for local calls, and my normal phone for calls
to/from home. What frustrates me is that even though dual-SIM phones have been
around for years, no Western service provider will sell them, so none of the
more popular smart phones support it.

------
chrsstrm
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.

~~~
mjn
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.

~~~
chrsstrm
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.

------
liquidcool
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.

------
dude3
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.

~~~
dude3
Also I can use the SIM in international phones in the US. I have a french
phone.

------
r00fus
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.

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

~~~
zonkey
[http://opensignal.com](http://opensignal.com) Don't know how accurate it can
be.

~~~
nknighthb
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).

------
rdl
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.

------
tomp
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).

------
NemesorZandrak
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
Huh?

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

------
lobster_johnson
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.

~~~
firloop
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.

------
aCCelerate
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.

------
rallison
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.

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

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

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

------
wandermatt
List of countries here:
[http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp](http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2425436,00.asp)

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

::rageface::

~~~
codemac

      % 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

~~~
cocoflunchy
Even better:

    
    
       pbpaste | sort | pbcopy

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

~~~
unsignedint
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...

~~~
andrewpi
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.

~~~
unsignedint
How much do they cost these days? I remember they were bit pricy... (and quick
search really doesn't reveal how much it is any more?)

------
nathana
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.

------
matthewmcg
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.

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

~~~
brownbat
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.

------
ShinyObject
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.

------
SeoxyS
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.

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

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

~~~
brendanf
I believe they will work in most of the EU for carriers like Vodafone, but you
may have to pay roaming. You can also get roaming packages from some of the
carriers such as Alditalk [http://www.alditalk.de/web/internet-prepaid-
tarif/eu_interne...](http://www.alditalk.de/web/internet-prepaid-
tarif/eu_internet_paket_60/)

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

------
nomercy400
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?

------
kin
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.

------
jonny_eh
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](https://medium.com/i-m-
h-o/b8c4a2164434)

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

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

------
EveretteTaylor
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.

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

~~~
iNeal
You can probably still return it.

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

------
badclient
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."

------
jordanthoms
This is _awesome_!

------
hydralist
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

------
grecy
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.

