greg- do you keep the phone setting the same as when home in US? Or do you put the phone in airplane mode?

We will use Viber for free phone calls as free beats 20 cents/minute but will use T Mobile for text and data.

Okay let me admit I am really confused ! Do I need to get a new phone plan with T Mobile? Will I be able to get this great free unlimited data and texting with a new plan? I currently have Verizon and my phone is unlocked . I was thinking of just buying a aim in each country . Will I have to synch my phone ?
Lost and confused .

To get the benefits of T Mobile, you have to switch carriers. And a new phone. We actually did this because we are going to 8 countries in Europe for 3 months and didn't want to have to mess with various SIM cards etc. We also wanted the other benefits of T Mobile at home - or so we thought. Lower monthly bill, unlimited text, calls and data. No contract...blah blah blah.

Honestly, we are less than thrilled with our home coverage with T Mobile. Wifi calling isn't great and there are lots of places with no cell coverage.

While they don't have any contracts, you must buy new T Mobile phones and if you want a new iPhone or Galaxay S5, it will cost you several hundred dollars to do so. And if you don't stay long enough, you have to pay in full for phones, almost $600 a piece! So, you are pretty much locked in for 2 years, even if there are "no contracts".

So, I would not switch to TMobile just for the usage in Europe, unless you are going there a lot and know for a fact they have great coverage where you live.

You set the phone as if you are at home. That is why the T-Mobile Simple Choice plan is so easy use.

Setting the phone is airline mode even AFTER landing in Europe is an old way to using the phone.

Several people mentioned staying away from t-mobile USA because of poor coverage at home. I don't even get one bar at home! How can a t-mobile be usable in the US for me? They also include a service called WiFi calling on their t-mobile branded phones. With that, all my calls and texts are routed to Wifi when I am at home. So even though I get one signal bar at best and Verizon/ATTwireless get two bars, because of the Wifi calling, I get better "reception" at home using t-mobile than the Verizon/ATTwireless users. This Wifi calling has an interesting behavior in Europe. If I am at hotel connected to Wifi, my t-mobile phone would swich to Wifi-calling. There is a mental gymnastic needed because Wifi has no country/area code, so as soon as I step back into my hotel in Switzerland, etc, my phone thinks I am in the U.S. I call U.S. numbers, at no cost, using U.S. local dialing sequence, without international prefix. As soon as I step out of my hotel and the call is done over the mobile network, I would have to add international prefix to call U.S.A.

DebitNM , so what is really involved with getting a SIM in each country. We want to be able to make calls home - need to check up on my elderly mother everyday and DH will need to make a few calls business related. Probably use some texting and internet for google maps and finding restaurants and such . Will it require additional steps to set the phone up with the new Sim?

It is not necessary to use t-mobile U.S.A. branded phone to use the Simple Choice plan. I initilaly used a Google Nexus phone and verified that the Simple Choice free data roaming works in several European countires.

What t-mobile branded phone get you are the followings:

1. T-Mobile uses UMTS band 4 in the U.S.A. for 3G. Only a few non t-mobile branded phonen operates on this band. The Google Nexus is one of the few. However, most phones operate on European UMTS bands, so outside the U.S.A., lack of band 4 is irrelevant.
2. A handful of t-mobile branded phones can do Wifi-calling. This is built into their ROM. If you always make calls using cell network, lack of this capability is irrelevant.

NE - As far am making phone calls using SIM card, I am not sure how many different actual SIMS cards you need. I have only used a Lebara SIM in France, which was easy to do. You need to have a minimum on each card - maybe 10 euros? - so loading a lot of cards seems silly. I know there are those on here who are much more cognizant of using SIM cards in different countries, I will yield to them. It seems that using a single SIM for calls, even if in a different country may be easy.

I used VIBER while in France, even though I had the Lebara SIM to save money and to be able to text. I used SKYPE in Italy for calls.

That may be the easiest thing for you.

greg- I used the T Mobile up in Newfoundland this summer and even when I had wifi, the phone didn't want to make calls. DH used his in northern reaches of New England and had similar difficulties.