T-Mobile US launches free roaming, 4G data for travelers to Canada and Mexico
T-Mobile U.S. on Thursday announced that, thanks to new deals with regional carriers, Simple Choice plan subscribers will soon have access to free voice, text, and LTE data roaming while visiting Canada or Mexico.
The change is due to take effect July 15, and will apply to both prepaid and post-paid subscribers, the carrier said. Businesses will have the feature free for their first 10 lines, but pay $1 per month for each line past that point.
LTE coverage will be available in 30 Canadian cities, such as Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, St. Johns, Toronto, and Vancouver. In Mexico the list is 100, with notable locations such as Acapulco, Cancun, Cozumel, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Veracruz.
U.S. carriers normally charge extra for roaming in North America. Without buying special travel packages, people can easily rack up hundreds or even thousands of dollars in service fees.
To better compete with leading carriers AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile has been making aggressive upgrades to its subscription plans in the past few years, for instance introducing Data Stash, which rolls over unused data from month to month. Some of these additions have forced rivals carriers to adapt to maintain an edge.
The change is due to take effect July 15, and will apply to both prepaid and post-paid subscribers, the carrier said. Businesses will have the feature free for their first 10 lines, but pay $1 per month for each line past that point.
LTE coverage will be available in 30 Canadian cities, such as Calgary, Montreal, Ottawa, Saskatoon, St. Johns, Toronto, and Vancouver. In Mexico the list is 100, with notable locations such as Acapulco, Cancun, Cozumel, Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Veracruz.
U.S. carriers normally charge extra for roaming in North America. Without buying special travel packages, people can easily rack up hundreds or even thousands of dollars in service fees.
To better compete with leading carriers AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile has been making aggressive upgrades to its subscription plans in the past few years, for instance introducing Data Stash, which rolls over unused data from month to month. Some of these additions have forced rivals carriers to adapt to maintain an edge.
Comments
But still, it makes you question how often do you travel to Mexico or Canada. Is it worth saving $25 to $30 in annual international roaming charges to put up with swiss-cheese coverage in the US?
We also had good inexpensive coverage in Japan earlier this year; especially nice was no stomach acid over whether we might accidentally get hit with some "out-of-network" roaming charges, which didn't happen.
And we may be going to Mexico later this year or next year.
Our T-Mobile coverage here in NW Washington state is adequate, and we have LTE at 50-60Mbps at home (not needed) and in many public areas, such as malls and their parking lots. Yes, when you get out in the sticks coverage can get pretty bad, with 2G data, but for our usual patterns of use, which include Canada and Japan, T-Mobile is excellent value. Getting excellenter :-)
I'm wondering what CDN carrier they use ?
Two of our carriers have very good coverage, with one slightly superior, the third has worse coverage.
Of course with our significant regions with little or no population,
coverage in those regions likely is none !
This is similar to roaming services across the European Union.
But still, it makes you question how often do you travel to Mexico or Canada. Is it worth saving $25 to $30 in annual international roaming charges to put up with swiss-cheese coverage in the US?
Actually it does. I used to be with ATT. I switched to T-Mobile. My data plan costs reduced by $40 /month. And my international charges by $30 /month. That's $70 /month. And yes, I was in Canada on a monthly basis. Not to mention my European travels this past year.
Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for AT&T to offer wifi calling, which they said would be available with iOS 7. Hey, Ma Bell, iOS 8 launches in two months. Get the lead out.
I remember when AT&T said it would be released in January. When Wifi Calling came out on iOS8 on the iPhone 6 and 6+ on T-mobile. I don't think it was on the iphone 5S or iOS7. Haven't AT&T or is it Verizon saying how they really don't need it, that they have great service everywhere!!! I know everyone stinks where I work. At least inside this brick building. I have a Wifi Router 2 feet in front of me in my Office inside this factory. When I get 1 bar in my office. I had that with AT&T, and I get that with T-mobile. I know others that have Sprint and Verizon and it's no better. If I answer the phone in my office I can hear them and they can't hear me, so I'm rushing out of my office and outside before they hang up. With Wifi Calling, I can sit back and relax and the call is crystal clear!!! When I'm at home it's not the best, but works, and Wifi Calling just makes it better. At my brothers house, He's in a low area when everyone cuts out. But again, Wifi Calling there and I have no problem.
I have no problem out of the roads around here and am always streaming Music. The only time I have a issue is when I want to go to the lake and Jetski and about half way there I get No service. Then again it's up in the mountains and twisting roads. Cell service from everyone is just as bad. When that happens I just switch my truck radio from Blue Tooth to playing the SD card that has a bunch of my music on it. Not the end of the world. This is just another great feature for T-Mobile. I hope they add Apple Music to their free Streaming service also. I then turn up quality and stream away as it doesn't count against your Data use.
I've read that T-Mobile roams with Rogers, Telus, Wind and Mobilicity. Rogers has now bought Mibilicity but full transaction is supposed to be finalized December 2015.
Rogers and Telus have national coverage, with Rogers being more city centric while Telus has a bigger presence in Alberta and British Columbia in the west. Telus shares a chunk of bandwidth and cell towers with Bell., the third of our big 3 carriers. Rogers has minimal presence in some Maritime provinces while Telus, it able to use Bell towers and bandwidth has good coverage.
Telus and Bell have minimum HSPA speed while Rogers in remote rural areas can go down to GPRS speeds.
Wind is a tiny new entrant with currently only HSPA or HSPA+ coverage in Vancouver, BC; Calgary and Edmonton, AB; and southern and eastern ON including Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Windsor plus other cities. Low data speeds, no LTE yet and some dead spots in its coverage areas, but for being 5 years old, it's doing pretty good. I like and am on Wind myself.
Mobilicity's coverage area is smaller than Winds coverage area and only in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto and Ottawa. No LTE, not sure of the specs but think it is HSPA, possibly an older variant so might be slower. No idea on the specifics.
Root Metrics just did some testing in Calgary and a short bit ago in Vancouver if you want some specifics.
Hope that helps.
"THE" third? Don't you mean "A" third? Or "the rest"? You make it sound like we only have 3 carriers in Canada. By my count, we have at least 7! Sure - some of them make use of shared towers or shared networks (Fido/Telus), but they are still classified as separate carriers. Apart from those two, my part of Canada also has Rogers, Bell, Wind, Public Mobile and Virgin Mobile. I would not be surprised to find regional carriers in other provinces as well.
Has anybody seen the fine print for this T-Mobile plan? If I'm on a plan that gives me 2GB of monthly data and I go on a 30-day trip to Canada, can I just use my entire 2GB of data with no extra charges at all...or do they have some sort of limit for the data you use outside of your home country? It almost seems too good to be true. To go from $0.05/kB to FREE for 2 million times that amount of data! At 5 cents per kilobyte (which is what most carriers charge for using data in another country), using 2GB of data while travelling would cost you $200,000! Even though residents of the country you have travelled to would pay about $50 or less for a plan that includes the same 2GB of data! It still blows my mind that they were EVER allowed to charge such criminal prices to start with! What's even worse is that they tried to mislead the average person into thinking data roaming was affordable by showing them a price like 5 cents! A lot of people don't know a kilobyte from a megabyte from a gigabyte and they certainly didn't know that emailing a friend a single picture (roughly 3 MB in size) would cost them $150!!!
...Even though residents of the country you have travelled to would pay about $50 or less for a plan that includes the same 2GB of data! It still blows my mind that they were EVER allowed to charge such criminal prices to start with! ....
So true.
Data roaming should NEVER cost more than the sum of the normal charges from the local operator and the charges from your plan.
And that is BEFORE negotiations between operators start to lower the prices for international (and, why not: national) data roaming get started.
And, by the way, European roaming (I am mainly interested in data roaming) will only be free AFTER 2016. In the mean time, European operators are still conspiring to charge near-criminal fees for international data roaming -- no longer 1000 - 10000 times too much, but still around 10 times too much, if you are careful).
Here's the fine print: http://explore.t-mobile.com/3countryplan
It does say, among other things: Not for extended international use; you must reside in the U.S. and primary usage must occur on our U.S. network. Service may be terminated or restricted for excessive roaming or misuse.
Not available for use while in Canada or Mexico.
So I will be very interested to hear about the experience of those who travel there and attempt to use the service. Also any ideas about how this might be used by folks who may live across the border in Canada but work in the US, who would need phones mostly while in US, but occasionally from Canada.
I currently have a US T-Mobile plan and it roams on Rogers, Bell and Telus on Vancouver Island. No sign of other carriers. The roaming charges are totally unclear and in the past T-Mobile has refused to divulge how my pay as you go plan is drawn down.
Firstly you got your count and information wrong, by three he means the big three
Rogers, Bell, Telus those are the independent carriers in the country.
Thanks to the AWS spectrum auction a few years ago we got Wind and Moblicity as well
unfortunately the big three that also participated in that auction didn't have to follow the rules on thethe peering relationship clause in the auction so mobley city in wind are basically stuck in the big cities that they've done their rollouts
on top of that Moblicity is in talks to being bought by Rogers to once again further limit our options.
Bell and Telus share towers. so they have the same network coverage but they are independent actual carriers so their plans can differ greatly
The rest of these carriers are MVNO's (piggybacking off of someone else's signal while not having any of there own, So there not really able to compete because they need to buy their bits/service from one of the other big 3 carriers.
they may offer different plans but they don't necessarily offer better plans)
Fido in Rogers are the same company. Fido does NOT share towers with Telus.
When Fido was purchased by Rogers, Rogers incorporated their towers into the Rogers network and Fido became an MVNO.
As for the rest of these koodo is Telus, Solo is bell, Virgin is bell, PC mobile is Rogers, 7-Eleven/Petro can is Rogers, etc.
So yeah by my count we have the big three and then 2 halves (if that) going down to 1 if roger has there way
these semi-options are only for if you live in a big city and don't plan on roaming
*Hooray for government-sponsored oligarchies sarcasm*
Thanks for posting the link to the fine print. I read the whole thing. The "not available for use while in Canada or Mexico" statement you posted was with regards to specific features - like the data-rollover. Their "coverage" description leaves a lot to be desired. They don't provide a map - just a list of city names. I live just outside of the Toronto borders but part of what is referred to as the "GTA" (greater Toronto area). No idea if coverage would extend this far or if it is limited to Toronto proper. Also, they don't say who their roaming partner networks are - or what happens (pricing-wise) if you have to use your phone in Canada or Mexico outside one of the listed cities? Is it reasonable or is it ridiculous? Is there an easy way to tell? It would also be better if they clarified how they determine "excessive" roaming? Is it based on number of days? Number of megabytes? Something else? I can't imagine that they would offer this service if there were any chance of losing money on it - and with that being said, why would they restrict it to US residents instead of also selling to Canada and Mexico residents?
I live in Canada, but spend about 50% of my time in the U.S. for 10 months of the year. Up until now, my solution for cross-border communications has been an unlocked iPhone with a $90/month plan (reduced to 60 for using an unlocked phone). It gives me unlimited calling within Canada and 2-3GB of data (I forget which). I also have a prepaid go-phone account from AT&T which is 60/month and gives me unlimited calling within the U.S and 2.5GB Of data. (I'll be switching to a $45 plan I just discovered that gives me the same or more on my next trip south). To handle incoming and outgoing cross-border calling, I also have a RingCentral account which costs $60 month and gives me VOIP in my home as well as 2 additional "virtual" phone numbers (1 in Canada, 1 in U.S.) and an iPhone app that can be used for initiating cellular calls to either country showing my choice of caller ID and can also use it to make/receive VOIP calls via same phone numbers from anywhere in the world. I can send/receive text messages from any of the virtual phone numbers - or my Horne VOIP number (through the app) and the best part is the call forwarding. If anybody calls any one of my 3 numbers - it rings on all of my phone numbers simultaneously - so when I'm in the U.S. with my GoPhone SIM and someone dials my Canadiab RingCentral number, the call arrives in my US number and their is no long distance charge for myself or the Canadian caller. The same is true when I'm in Canada and someone calls my US number. All told - this setup costs about $180 month but it is SOOOOOOOO worth it compared to all of the other alternatives that were available to me 2 years ago when I originally set this up - and it does give me HOME and cell service with unlimited calls/texts between Canada and the U.S. with up to 5 GB of data (and additional data at $10/GB - but in 2 years, I've never run out and had to buy more...)
Thanks for posting the link to the fine print. I read the whole thing. The "not available for use while in Canada or Mexico" statement you posted was with regards to specific features - like the data-rollover. Their "coverage" description leaves a lot to be desired. They don't provide a map - just a list of city names. I live just outside of the Toronto borders but part of what is referred to as the "GTA" (greater Toronto area). No idea if coverage would extend this far or if it is limited to Toronto proper. Also, they don't say who their roaming partner networks are - or what happens (pricing-wise) if you have to use your phone in Canada or Mexico outside one of the listed cities? Is it reasonable or is it ridiculous? Is there an easy way to tell? It would also be better if they clarified how they determine "excessive" roaming? Is it based on number of days? Number of megabytes? Something else? I can't imagine that they would offer this service if there were any chance of losing money on it - and with that being said, why would they restrict it to US residents instead of also selling to Canada and Mexico residents?
I live in Canada, but spend about 50% of my time in the U.S. for 10 months of the year. Up until now, my solution for cross-border communications has been an unlocked iPhone with a $90/month plan (reduced to 60 for using an unlocked phone). It gives me unlimited calling within Canada and 2-3GB of data (I forget which). I also have a prepaid go-phone account from AT&T which is 60/month and gives me unlimited calling within the U.S and 2.5GB Of data. (I'll be switching to a $45 plan I just discovered that gives me the same or more on my next trip south). To handle incoming and outgoing cross-border calling, I also have a RingCentral account which costs $60 month and gives me VOIP in my home as well as 2 additional "virtual" phone numbers (1 in Canada, 1 in U.S.) and an iPhone app that can be used for initiating cellular calls to either country showing my choice of caller ID and can also use it to make/receive VOIP calls via same phone numbers from anywhere in the world. I can send/receive text messages from any of the virtual phone numbers - or my Horne VOIP number (through the app) and the best part is the call forwarding. If anybody calls any one of my 3 numbers - it rings on all of my phone numbers simultaneously - so when I'm in the U.S. with my GoPhone SIM and someone dials my Canadiab RingCentral number, the call arrives in my US number and their is no long distance charge for myself or the Canadian caller. The same is true when I'm in Canada and someone calls my US number. All told - this setup costs about $180 month but it is SOOOOOOOO worth it compared to all of the other alternatives that were available to me 2 years ago when I originally set this up - and it does give me HOME and cell service with unlimited calls/texts between Canada and the U.S. with up to 5 GB of data (and additional data at $10/GB - but in 2 years, I've never run out and had to buy more...)
Interesting info in your post re your own situation and coverage. Will check out Ring Central if I can find it. On another list someone who works for TMo said (not to be quoted) that they thought if you used it >50% in Canada you would be disqualified. I could see that in negotiating with sharing use of networks of higher priced Canadian carriers TMo would have to try to assure the big guys (which I take it are Rogers and Telus) that they would not be marketing to Canadian customers, and this is how they would be sure. My GUESS is that if Rogers and/or Telus cover your GTA then you would be able to use it. The price including data is really pretty good ($50-$60/mo) and no contract is required. You might be able to ditch your other two plans if you really are a 50/50 player. There may be a lot of us. I've been with TMo for years and the only problem I've had is that some US areas are not well covered, mainly rural ones.
When I started to apply for this offer I immediately got a popup with someone offering to answer all of my questions. Perhaps you could explore further this way if you wish.