Cell Phone Service through Sprint

Sprint International service is the Bomb!!! I used this for three weeks last May. In Prague and Vienna I was hooked up to T-Mobile and had wonderful 4G LTE service. Poland and Hungary were local Providers and the service was not quite as good but entirely adequate. As long as I could connect to Google Maps and email and text I was fine. Best of all, I could stream Netflix!!! I'm one of those people who need something in the background to get to sleep, preferably Law and Order, but found some great European crime series as a substitute.
And no extra fees, except for a few phone calls.

Sprint basically copied what T- Mobile was offering.

But t doesn't matter as it looks as if the two companies will be merging.

Frank: didn't know that. I have been using Sprint's international service for about 4 years and didn't know T-Mobile's plan was that old.

Thank you for this great info! I just came on here to figure out what we should do for cell phone service while traveling in Scotland this coming April. Our last trip we went without phones other than using wifi and there were a few times it would have been nice to be able to call or text our Scottish family who was showing us around (like when we lost them in a small town and I was coming up to a roundabout and had no idea where to go!)

Your Sprint phone uses CDMA technology in the US for cell phone communications, but in Europe they use GSM, so your Sprint phone will need to be able to roam on GSM. Most newer smart phones can roam on GSM, but you may need to switch your phone so it can roam - maybe a "global"mode. T-Mobile users don't have to worry about this, because T-Mobile already uses GSM in the US. An old Sprint flip phone (no SIM card) is not going to work in Europe at all, because it's CDMA-only.

Note that US phones that work as 4G phones in the US may not have all of the same frequencies needed to connected at 4G or even 3G in Europe - you might be stuck on a slow 2G "edge" network, which is usable for basic things like email and mapping but might be frustrating for much more. (Even T-Mobile phones could have this issue.) All depends on the make/model of the phone, not on Sprint or T-Mobile.

My experience with T-Mobile phones is that they always connect to the fastest networks available, even 4G networks if your phone is capable of connecting to them. But they will "throttle" your speed down to 2G anyway, which might mean a fast connection most of the time until you try streaming video or something - at least, that was my experience with T-Mobile. I assume Sprint's international roaming operates about the same way.

If you plan to make more than a few short phone calls home to the US, consider installing Google Hangouts on your smart phone to make free calls to US (even to landlines). Call an airline or credit card company (as I had to on my recent trip to Paris when my flight home was delayed four hours) and maybe being on hold for a while and that 20 cents/minute really adds up. (An hour call would cost you $12.) Google Hangouts works on WiFi, too. But set it up before you leave the US.

Andrew: for my uses the 2G streaming is plenty. For checking email, getting driving directions from the Google lady, and checking the previous night's baseball scores, that is more than enough. I am not sure why I would really need more. Many hotels have wifi available in the event I would need any more streaming power. I have never had any issues with either of my Sprint phones. My old Samsung S4 and my current S7 have worked like a charm.