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T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

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Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#71

Post by pauljforyt »

xster wrote: post #31
mikeash wrote: post #16

T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!

T-Mobile sounds great on paper but it's like selling sports cars for 1000$ and you don't know you just bought a Lada until you take it for a spin. I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San F…

I have the same experience on a daily basis. I get no service to a maximum of 1 bar standing next to a window at home and the same sitting at my desk at work (which happens to be next to a nice, big window). Couple that with dead zones on the commute to work, and I spend almost 100% of my day with little to no service. And no, I do not live in the middle of nowhere; I live a tad bit north of Chicago. AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint all have fantastic service here. I'm trying to get out of my legacy contract with T-Mobile over this, but they want to charge me $300 to terminate.

T-Mobile can throw in as many features as they want, but if I can't reliably make a call from home or work, then it's useless to me.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#72

Post by jquery »

xster wrote: post #31
mikeash wrote: post #16

T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!

T-Mobile sounds great on paper but it's like selling sports cars for 1000$ and you don't know you just bought a Lada until you take it for a spin. I drove from the Canadian east coast to California with a T-Mobile unlimited plan. For 90% of the trip, I was actually roaming on other carriers' networks. I derived zero value from my payment to T-Mobile since I can't actually use my phone except for 911. Now I'm in San F…

I can only speak for San Francisco, but that sounds like an issue with your phone, not t-mobile. Make sure your phone supports LTE and HSPA+ on the right spectrums. My experience with T-mobile in SF has been nothing short of superb, on an unlocked iPhone 5. Super-fast low-latency everywhere I go.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#74

Post by kamjam »

mikeash wrote: post #16

T-Mobile's policies over the past couple of years have really made me want to become a customer. Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional, and now this. I just wish their network was a little better!

Plans that are actually reasonably priced, explicitly calling out handset subsidies and making them optional

This has actually been the norm in UK for quite some years. Look on t-mobile.co.uk for example, they have a SIM Only plans. As an example:

> The Full Monty (SIM Only), £26/month on 12 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data

> iPhone 5c 16GB, £42/month on 24 month contract = unlimited talk, text + data, £30 for phone

So the same plan, the iPhone effectively costs you £414. That't not actually a bad price, esp if you consider it as finance. But not everyone wants a new phone, e.g. maybe your iPhone 5 is still "good" and you want to wait for the iPhone 6 to come out in a year...

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#75

Post by chrsstrm »

mjn wrote: post #63
chrsstrm wrote: post #19

This is great. I had an incident in Belize this year where I turned off airplane mode to connect to wifi on the boat I was on and my cellular radio auto-connected to Belize's local mobile carrier without me realizing (I had international roaming enabled on my account). My phone started syncing and updating apps in the background and within 2 minutes of passive usage I had amassed $270 in data charges. Only. 2. Minute…

To avoid this (common) issue, EU regulations now mandate a roaming-fee cutoff at €50 until the account-holder positively indicates their knowledge and acceptance of additional roaming fees. They can also pre-authorize a higher cutoff if they really do expect to be incurring more than €50 in roaming fees and don't want to be cut off, but this must be an explicit opt-in (not the default terms of a data plan). The resul…

That was a big portion of the basis of my appeal; a carrier shouldn't allow charges to be compounded that high and that fast. There were alert SMS messages stating my data charges balance, but the $50, $100, and $200 alerts all arrived at the exact same time, literally all had the same timestamp. If I had been capped at $50 and then prompted in order to continue, I would have paid the fee and learned my lesson.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#76

Post by Figs »

brownbat wrote: post #44
elq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The still have that plan - http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans it's just a bit hidden.

Wow, but that is some very stealthy work. T-Mobile isn't exactly going out of its way to let people know this exists. It's not featured in the way you do for a plan you envision as the future cornerstone of the business.

I have this plan. Had to call customer service to get them to honor it. Bit of a hassle, but they did it. It's not available in their regular plan settings; clearly they'd rather people buy the more expensive plan with unlimited minutes instead. I won't be particularly surprised if they discontinue it at some point soon. For the time being, the plan meets my needs quite well though.

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#78

Post by chaz »

elq wrote: post #37
brownbat wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had. [EDIT: Er, Have. With apologies, see below discussion.] I'm paying $25/mo for a limited no-contract BYOB plan. They're still taking my money for it, but I'm a little scared, since I can no longer find it on the site. Over the last six months, I've seen T-Mobile BYOD plans at $15, 25, 30, 35, 45, and up. Now, you can't get any plan from T-Mobile under $50 per month, and that "cheap" plan comes with less high spee…

The still have that plan - http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans it's just a bit hidden.

I just called in to activate this plan (I'm already on a prepaid TMO plan). I couldn't get it on the phone, but the CSR told me that I could order the activation kit from walmart.com, call in, and activate it using the code from the kit. The code can be applied to either a new line or an existing line. The kit sells for ~$30 but includes $30 of service.

Here's the kit: http://www.walmart.com/ip/T-Mobile-SIM-Kit/24099996

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#79

Post by moosehawk »

cbr wrote: post #56
joelrunyon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just switched in April after hating life with AT&T and deciding to put my money where my mouth was. In cities - their coverage is VERY good. Countryside & cross country road trips are where they fall off the map, but I've been very happy paying $80 for unlimited call/text/data + No B.S. T-Mobile is way behind in terms of users & they know it - which means they're making strong plays against the competition. Makes m…

$80? Pre-paid that's $45.

Even less if you don't talk much:

http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans ($30/m for 5GB of 4G, unlimited text, 100 minutes)

Re: T-Mobile to offer free unlimited international data, texts

#80

Post by unsignedint »

trimbo wrote: post #10

Noted it is 2G only, but it is a great step forward.

It'll certainly be huge step forward -- I sometimes go to Japan, and it's hard to find pay phones these days, and they make me jump through a lot of hoops getting prepaid phone there, if that's even possible as a foreigner...
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