T-Mobile

I have T-Mobile and was in Italy a couple of weeks ago. I think my roaming was "Off" and had no problems, most of the time. It took what seemed one-half hour for T-Mobile to kick in once I had landed at FCO. By the time I deplaned, exited the ladies room and claimed my luggage I was up and running w T-Mobile. In 2019 I used a TIM SIM card and that worked well.

BTW, passport control was much simpler than my last visit in 2019. It's a two part scan; first scan your passport, then move up a foot to the next scanner and place your hand down a few seconds, and then be sure to remove your hand. The plexiglass door will then open. I kept my hand on the scanner and the monitor kept reading my print but the door would not open! The scanner attendants are not terribly helpful...... Have a great holiday!

If you have data roaming turned on domestically, you don’t need to do anything when you travel internationally with T-Mobile. We have had great service in Sicily, Spain and South Korea.

I don't recall needing to do anything in Italy in Sept 2022 or Austria/Germany Nov/Dec 2023. WiFi calling from your hotel works great, too.

Yes, roaming needs to be turned on. I have mine on all the time, even in the U.S.

Magenta is one of the plans that covers international. It sounds like you have the regular plan with slow data. When you arrive, you should get a text from T-Mobile that basically says ”welcome to Italy”, states that you have free text and data, and tells you how you can upgrade to high-speed data for an extra fee. I never upgraded to high speed data until last year when I was traveling for a month and paid the additional $50 to get a month of high-speed data. The slow data is generally fine for texting or googlemaps or checking text based email, but it can be painfully slow on certain websites

p.s. The guy with the $143K bill was on a very old plan that did not include international.

The simple answer is yes, data roaming needs to be turned on. Mine is turned on all the time regardless of where I am. That's basically telling the phone it's okay to connect to another network besides T-Mobile. (It's okay to do as the phone will only connect to networks that have arrangments with T-Mobile.) You do not have to notify them.

If you were on airplane mode during your flight and take it out of airplane mode when you arrive in Italy it should automatically connect to an Italian network. If it doesn't, a simple reboot will get it working. But give it a minute or two. It's not instantaneous.

I've been using T-Mobile for years in Europe.

Depending on your plan, you might get speeds up to 5G at no extra cost. They keep changing this as well as the names of plans. Check with T-Mobile.

Another mostly happy TMobile user on several trips to Italy. It's been years since I was in Italy last, but in recent trips to Spain and Brazil, we needed the speed upgrade.

9 days in Switzerland in January. Data roaming on plus 9 outgoing voice calls resulted in $21 added to my monthly bill with the Magenta 60+ plan.

I was in Italy last May and have the T-Mobile Magenta plan and had to turn on roaming. No problems.

I have Magenta Max 55+ ($90/mo for 2 lines).
I have Cellular Data Roaming ON while at home in the US , and do nothing when I travel to Italy. I leave it on.

If you have an iPhone go to Settings/Cellular and select:
Cellular Data ON (green)
Then click on the Cellular Data Options >
select Data Roaming ON (green)

You're ready to roll.

I also have an Ipad. While in Italy I usually purchase a local SIM card with data plan for tablet with Vodafone. The cost is 10€ for a month (plus the cost of the SIM card, another 10€). I do so because T-Mobile Magenta is not as fast as the local plans and if you need to download or stream videos in your ipad, a local plan is faster. Also T-Mobile usually roams using the TIM network, and if I'm in an area where TIM doesn't work as well (my country house is in a location better covered by Vodafone), I can use it better.

I also have T-Mobile Magenta and an i-Phone. I leave Cellular Data On, Cellular Roaming Off, WiFi Calling On--all the time, so that it is not burning battery searching. With Cellular Roaming Off any calls when I am out of the US go via WiFi and not via their charges. I should leave Wifi off at home so that I am not burning battery having it search for Wifi, but I have son and daughter in law in Iceland and need it on so that WhatsApp can default to it if they call me. We just came back from two weeks and there were no issues with texting, I don't use my [hone for a browser but my partner uses her iPhone constantly for this and had no issues with these same settings.