For anyone who has T-Mobile, have you had issues immediately being able to use the phone (Samsung S-4) in England?
I'm told calls cost 20-cents per minute, and no restrictions on e-mail or texting.
Posted by
Everett, WA
1300 posts
I have been looking for firsthand reports as well. This is the link to an earlier discussion on it:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tech-tips/t-mobile-s-free-global-data-experiences
My friend went to Sweden in June and said her T-mobile worked as advertised (free texting, etc. She did not make any calls since she was traveling with her whole family...all 19 of them)
I will be testing it out myself during the month of September.
Posted by
USA
139 posts
I used the international plan with an iPhone 4s and iphone 3G in Turkey. Texting and email worked great. Sometimes other data was slow but that could have been due to my location. I did make voice calls and those were the most unpredictable. You could try using data for calls, like FaceTime or Skype or an app like viber. I have found that when you are home planning for the trip you think a little inconvenience will be no big deal but when you are traveling, tired, and in new places you want everything to be easy. So download any apps you need and make sure you have contacts programmed in before you go. And if you already have T mobile you do need to add international to your plan before you go. The best thing bout T mobile was that there were no surprises when the bill came after I got home. My friend with Verizon kindly loaned her phone to someone else on the tour and ended up with a $900 phone bill!
Posted by
5 posts
I have been using this plan in England and Scotland for a little over 2 weeks now. I have the standard US plan that includes "unlimited data" in 100+ countries. This is misleading though, because the speed is very limited. If you dig on their website, you can find in the fine print that they limit you to 128Kbps. That's much slower than normal 4G or even normal 3G, but it's fast enough to be useful. I use my phone a lot for navigation, finding restaurants, etc, and I've found that the speed is enough, although occasionally frustrating.
Unlimited texting is also free, and I've used that a few times to text friends back in the US.
If you use google maps, I suggest using the "save for offline use" feature to pre-load maps onto your phone. That helps a lot on the slow connection. It's not intuitive to find that feature in the app, but here are some instructions: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/3273567?hl=en-GB