Does T-mobile really offer useable global coverage?

I’ve used it many times on trips to Romania. Works fine. It’s a little slow, and I think it’s capped at 100MB, but it definitely works.

Worked very well in Thailand. LTE in large cities but acceptable 3G most everywhere else. 

Worked very well in Thailand. LTE in large cities but acceptable 3G everywhere else. 

I’ve used it in Canada, Germany, and the Dominican Republic. It’s worked perfected everywhere but capped at 128Kbps and limited to 2G GSM or 3G HSDPA.

FWIW, I now have Google Fi. They have TMO’s roaming agreement but it’s capped at 256Kbps and can use LTE as well. That gives a substantially better experience.

I have used it in Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. Heading to Brazil today and hope it works there too. It is very slow but good for things like email and whatsapp, iMessage etc.

I’ve used it in Saudi Arabia, Italy, St. Lucia, and Mexico in the last 18 months. It’s by far the best roaming plan for data, especially for navigating via Maps applications.

Please note that there are restrictions. It only covers data, so actually phone calls and texts are dependent on the other parts of your plan (voice calls in particular can add up). Also, there’s a limit on how many days a year you can use this. T-Mobile’s plan assumes that you are a traveler with a base of a certain amount of days in the U.S., so this is not an expatriate plan.

I have used it in China with great success. I believe there it is limited to 3G speeds only, but there is no data cap. This lets you get basic email and etc. while you are traveling, and you can see when you’re getting calls and choose to answer them as you like – it’s only something like 6c/minute for voice.

I’m a big fan of cool tools, but I think these featured questions are pretty weak. Bring back the tips! I thought that was really creative, and had a potential for longevity and community engagement vs. someone’s $3000 cargo bicycle or book about freeganism or whatever which are often tools only by a very expansive definition and will surely be obsolete or irrelevant in a couple of years.

I’ve used the free data roaming from the T-Mobile Simple Choice when I was in Thailand, Taiwan, Cambodia.   While the speeds were not fast, it was perfectly fine for email, and google maps/navigation. Service was available in Laos, but at a very expensive rate. 

Hi Kevin!  My teenage daughters and their mom spent 3 weeks in Japan last summer (2015), shortly after switching to T-Mobile and they had absolutely no problems whatsoever. If teenagers manage to stay connected without complaints, then it must be a pretty robust service!

I recently moved to Athens, Greece. I kept my US Tmobile cell number for business purposes. It works perfectly. Wifi calling works, and I do not get charged for those calls. Off of wifi, it is 20 cents per minute for any and all calls. No charge for SMS or 3G data – I think you have to pay extra for 4G, but I have a Greek cell as my main driver with a full 4G plan. Make sure you are on the correct plan for these terms.

It depends what you want to use it for. 

If all you need to do is make calls, send SMS, use Whatsapp/iMessage, and perhaps check transit times on Citymapper, it’s perfectly serviceable. Since it’s capped, it’s basically useless for everything else. If you need real internet, you can either buy ’highspeed’ international data, which defeats the whole purpose of T-mobile, or just get a local SIM, as I normally do.

Was in Prague, Krakow and Budapest in 2014 with no issues of calling. Skyping or texting. All worked well. Will be traveling to Copenhagen and Malmo and T-Mobile has good coverage there I am told.

My daughter used her iPhone 6s with T-Mobile service in Japan earlier this year. Unlimited data and texts were free, and phone calls to the US were 20 cents a minute. For this reason alone, I’m glad we switched from AT&T. There are other reasons worth switching, including unlimited data in the US, a lower monthly bill, and Wi-Fi calling.

In Dec 2015, we were in Seoul, South Korea. We used our 6GB Data only plan SIM on iPhone that we use normally on iPad. We roamed on SK (one of largest network there) and even though speed was capped, it was always on LTE. For voice, we were able to get crystal clear FaceTime voice calls and even do some medium resolution FactTime Video as well. SMS and iMessage worked great as well. Since we were on data only, we didn’t have to worry about accidentally using voice roaming. I agree with rest of the comments here.

I’ve used this service in the UK and Canada, and my partner has used it in China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE. Overall it’s worked well – as others note the data can be a bit slow at times. Since we both travel quite a bit internationally we are really thrilled with this service and so happy we switched (from ATT).

The plane lands. You take the phone off of airplane mode. Before you even get out of the plane and into the airport you’ve got a text from T-Mobile welcoming you to wherever you are and reminding you of the service. 

As others have said, it works as advertised.  The feature was a major benefit that lured us away from Verizon.  

Like heraigma we’ve also moved to Project Fi which offers essentially the same service.  One big difference is Project Fi allows calling from US to anywhere without a special plan in place and their by the minute rates are very low.