T mobile international plan vs e sim

Do your phones have dual Esim capability? Are they unlocked? If so, I recommend supplementing an Esim for each phone for your trip. You will be able to toggle between both Esims. TMobile’s base international travel plan is okay but I find the free data starts to run slowly after a few days. Supplementing each phone with a European ESIM for your trip will be a bit cheaper but the data will be faster and more reliable than T Mobiles (based on my experience). There are a bunch of posts on this forum on your best eSIM options for your trip. If you don’t have Duel ESIM availability, then I would just pay for the T Mobile International upgrade as you will likely need additional data it offers.

If you currently have TMobile, you probably have international coverage. The $50 package is additional high-speed data when what comes with the plan runs out. If it runs out. If you save the picture sharing and video calls for the hotel or restaurant wifi, you might not need any more data. On a 30-day trip, I might be inclined to buy the 15-day package for $35 halfway through the trip, but I've never used it all. Probably never needed it but didn't want to try and add it with slow service while out sightseeing.

Oh, saw the comment above about reliability. I've used TMobile from Tegucigalpa to Johannesburg, to Moscow, to London, Rome, Paris, and Budapest and even Kyiv during an air raid. Flawless and fast.

We spend our summers living in Switzerland and use T-Mobile with no problem, even in the mountains. I haven’t found the data slow down to be a problem, but I’m also not watching movies while out and about or anything, so I guess if you’re doing high data activities that may be affected. I’ve traveled with people who did the eSIM route and based on our shared experiences, the ease of just having T-Mobile with no thought or issues has been worthwhile to me.

I've used the free T-Mobile international plan for the last several years and the only time I had a problem was in London, but I'm sure that was the local carrier they used. Other than that, it works very well. It's automatic, also—you don't have a do a thing. Once you enter Switzerland, you will get a text msg from TM that says, "Welcome to Switzerland" and you're covered from there on.

With only 11 days, you shouldn't worry about running out of data, but it's still good practice to use hotel wifi as much as you can.

First, find out if your T-Mobile plan has fast international data or slow data.

I have an older plan with slow international data. It works overseas, but I have become impatient waiting for pages to load. The last few month-long trips, I have paid the $50 to get 15 gb of high-speed data and it has been worth it to me. My plan costs $25 less a month than the new plans with high speed international, so it is still cheaper for me to pay for the international upgrade.

You can wait until you get there to make a decision. T-Mobile will send a link to upgrade with your ”Welcome to Switzerland” message when you first connect in Switzerland.

Hi, we always had free international data & texting with T-Mobile, but that changed when my husband died, and I switched to a cheaper 1-phone package. I found out in February that I didn’t have data outside the hotel wifi in Spain. Luckily, it wasn’t a big deal during that trip.

I purchased the $50 international data for my recent 3-week trip to Italy, and it worked great. I needed it to buy train tickets with the Trenitalia app and a few other situations.

Strange, I have the one phone magenta plan for old farts. Comes with international high-speed data. The plan would be cheaper per phone if I had 2 phones on the plan, but no one has agreed to do that with me because of the other requirements.

Strange, I have the one phone magenta plan for old farts. Comes with international high-speed data.

Some plans offer high-speed data in 215 countries.
Some plans only offer high speed data in 11 countries and slow data in 204 countries. Hungary is one of the 11 countries.

They don’t offer Magenta to new subscribers. One thing about T-Mobile is that your price generally stays the same until you change plans. I’ve been on the Simple Choice plan (their first plan wih free int’l) since 2014 and my price has not changed.

Here are the current plans. They are quite a bit more expensive than my plan. There are senior discounts. Fortunately my price is locked in for two more years. Mine is equivelent to the first one shown.

MOST EXPENSIVE
Experience Beyond
Unlimited text, 15GB of high-speed data in 215+ countries & destinations

LESS EXPENSIVE
Experience More
Unlimited text, 5GB of high-speed data in 215+ countries & destinations

Hi, you can rent a pocket WiFi with unlimited data from Ispot Connect for 11 days for 35 CHF. You can connect up to 10 units to the pocket wifi unit.

T Mobile is Telecom over here. Keep it simple, no need to go adding anything for only 11 days.

I have a Telekom plan too. Its a totally different animal. Its "workable" but thats about it.

Some other considerations:

WiFi calling. T-Mobile doesnt need a network connection to fully operate. It will work with a wifi connection. That means in the hotel room or cafe if you turn off your network (airplane mode), turn on and connect to wifi, if someone in the US calls you your phone will ring. If they text you your phone will buzz, no different than being on a network .... except its free.

I use 2 Factor Authentication with my bank and credit cards and often with things as common as Google log-in; and often its necessary if I forget a password. For that to work I must have access to my US phone texting service. Imagine needing to buy a ticket home because Aunt Agnes is in the hospital, and I can’t confirm the payment with the code in a text message. Yes, there are work arounds, but it’s just another thing to overcome.

Some US websites block all but US IP addresses. My US phone will have a US IP address. Again, there are work arounds, but again, more things to deal with. Who have I had problems connecting with because of IP addresses? Most of my State government agencies for instance. I imagine getting an email saying they have a photo of me running a red light on the way to the airport. Pay today and it’s $200, pay the next time I am in the states and its $400; but the state site where you pay for the ticket won’t let me connect because of my IP address. I also do some online shopping from here to send gifts to friends in the states for Christmas and birthdays. Eddie Bauer was the last that blocked my European IP address, so I used my US phone.

How much data do I need. Most of the photos I send are sent using Wi-Fi and my video calls to the kids are almost aways done on Wi-Fi, so the data plan is for Google Maps and for text, emails and occasionally other heavier uses. This source Holafly https://esim.holafly.com/how-to/how-much-data-for-travel is consistent with others on the internet and has this advice:

• Light user: 1 GB per week – Email, browsing, and messaging.
• Moderate user: 3-5 GB per week – Maps, music streaming, and social media.
• Heavy user: 10+ GB per week – Video calls, streaming shows, and uploads.

So let’s say that you use rely on wifi for the most part and you are down to 2 GB per week. The current T Mobile International plan with 215 country coverage has 5 GB of high speed data, so for most it should suffice for 2 weeks outside of the US (my old now discontinued but still working plan has 15 GB). But if you do come up short additional data cost are:

• 1-day 512MB for $5
• 15-day 5GB for $35
• 30-day 15GB for $50

The one problem that I have had is running out of high speed data on really long trips and the resulting connection being so slow that I finally had to go find Wi-Fi to log into my account and purchase more data. I just don’t want to fool with it or worry about it, so I buy the 15-day pass or a 30 days pass depending on the length of the trip, about after about 10 days. The cost of the trip is nothing.

And the award for "Best Wifi Calling Summary" goes to: (you know who)
Note that an ancient phone might not have wifi calling software, and some other very low cost MVNO providers might not support wifi calling. All the main ones will.

Not that it matters, but my grandfathered Tmo plan is Magenta 55+ and it's 5 gb. of high speed data in 11 countries and 256 kbps in 204. I pay $70/month for 2 lines. I hope that's never going to increase??

And to add to the Verizon $100/month calculation, It's $12/day or $100 per month, right? But the $100/month limit is per calendar month, I believe. So If someone goes to Switzerland from August 20 to September 10, they would pay the $100 twice, so it would be $200 for 20 days. Please correct me if I'm wrong here...

For Tmo, the added plans Mr. E listed are for 15 or 30 days, starting on the day you specify.

For train/bus/boat travel, the Swiss Travel Pass is 15 days of your choosing, like Tmo. The German Rail DB pass (only 58 Euros), is per calendar month, like Verizon.